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Dessert

Prune Pie

A pie made with prunes, sugar, lemon juice, butter, and flour, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Wash the prunes and soak them in water to cover.

  2. Cook the prunes below boiling point until soft.

  3. Uncover to allow water to evaporate.

  4. Remove the stones and cut the prunes into pieces.

  5. Add sugar, lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon of prune water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie plate with pastry and pour in the prune mixture.

  2. Dot the top with butter and sprinkle with flour.

  3. Cover with an upper crust.

  4. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes at 450°F.

  5. Reduce the temperature to 400°F.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 body and sweet, soft texture of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the prune juices as they cook down.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the prunes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that enriches the filling and helps browning on top.
Flour
Thickens the juices so the filling sets rather than running when sliced.

The step that matters

Uncover to allow water to evaporate. Excess water left in the prunes dilutes the filling and makes it runny. Cooking uncovered concentrates the juices so the filling holds its shape once baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour. 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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