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Dessert

Prune Whip

A dessert made from prunes, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice, baked in a buttered dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Prune Whip

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Pick over and wash the prunes.

  2. Soak the prunes in cold water for several hours.

  3. Cook the prunes in the same water until soft.

  4. Remove the stones from the cooked prunes.

  5. Strain the prunes.

  6. Add sugar to the strained prunes.

  7. Cook the mixture for five minutes until it is like marmalade.

Make the whip and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the cooled prune mixture and lemon juice to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Pile the mixture lightly in a buttered pudding dish.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for twenty minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with boiled custard.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main flavour and body, and their pectin helps the mixture thicken into a spoonable purée.
Eggs
Whipped whites trap air and set in the oven, giving the whip its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune purée and helps stabilise the whipped whites.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the prune flavour and supports the stability of the beaten whites.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cooled prune mixture to the beaten egg whites. Adding the purée slowly and folding gently keeps the whites from deflating, so the whip stays airy. A warm or rapidly poured purée would loosen the foam and lose its volume.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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