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Dessert

Norwegian Prune Pudding

A pudding made from prunes, sugar, cinnamon, and corn starch, simmered and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and corn work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Norwegian Prune Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Pick over and wash the prunes.

  2. Soak them in cold water for one hour.

  3. Boil the prunes until soft.

  4. Remove the stones and add the meat from the stones back to the prunes.

Make the pudding

  1. Add sugar, cinnamon, and boiling water.

  2. Simmer for ten minutes.

  3. Dilute the corn-starch with enough cold water to pour easily and add it to the prune mixture.

  4. Cook for five minutes.

  5. Remove the cinnamon.

Set and serve

  1. Mold the pudding.

  2. Chill.

  3. Serve.

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.

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. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 fruit flavour and sweetness, and body as they soften when boiled.
Corn-starch
Thickens the liquid into a pudding that holds its shape when chilled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the prunes.
Stick cinnamon
Adds warm aroma to the prune syrup; removed before molding.

The step that matters

Adding the diluted corn-starch. Cornstarch thickens only when heated, and lumps form if it is added undiluted. Diluting it in cold water first and stirring it into the hot mixture lets the starch disperse evenly before it gelatinises and sets the pudding.

“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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