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Dessert

Prune Whip

A dessert made from prunes and apricots whipped with egg whites, served with custard or whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Prune Whip

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook prunes and apricots until tender.

  2. Remove pits from the cooked fruit.

  3. Return the fruit to the pan.

  4. Add sugar.

  5. Cook until the mixture becomes a pulp.

  6. Remove as much skin as possible.

  7. Let the pulp cool.

Make the whip

  1. Add beaten egg whites.

  2. Beat rapidly for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with custard made from egg yolks, milk, and sugar.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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 pulp, sweetness, and body for the whip.
Apricots
Add extra fruit pulp and a brighter, tangy fruit flavor.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to lighten the pulp and give the dessert its airy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard served alongside, adding richness and helping it thicken.

The step that matters

Beat rapidly for 10 minutes. Egg whites must be beaten into a stable foam; underbeating leaves the whip dense and heavy, while the cooled pulp should be added to the whites without deflating them.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, cream. 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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