Why it works: Egg and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Prune Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the prunes
Stew the prunes until done, then let them cool.
Remove the seeds and cut the prunes into small pieces.
Make the pudding
Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.
Mix the prunes into the beaten egg whites.
Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake until browned.
Serve
Serve with cream.
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.
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Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 sweetness, and moisture that keeps the pudding soft.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a foam that gives the pudding its light, airy structure as it bakes.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to a stiff foam. If they are underbeaten or greasy, the foam collapses when the prunes are folded in, and the pudding bakes up dense instead of light.
“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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