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Dessert

Jellied Prunes

A sweet dessert made by cooking prunes in water, then setting them in a gelatin mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Jellied Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes and soak them overnight in cold water.

  2. Cook the prunes slowly in the soaking water until tender.

  3. Drain the prunes and measure the prune water; you should have 2 cups.

Make the jelly

  1. Make the jelly and chill it until it begins to set, then add the prunes.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar or custard sauce.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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 fruit flavour and body, and are suspended in the set jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the prune liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune liquid and balances its tartness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the prune flavour.

The step that matters

Add the prunes at partial set. Gelatine sets as the liquid cools. If the jelly is still runny, the prunes sink to the bottom. If it has fully set, they cannot be evenly distributed. Chilling only until it begins to set suspends the prunes evenly.

“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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