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Dessert

Prune Whip

A sweet dessert made from stewed prunes, sugar, egg whites, nuts, and vanilla, cooked slowly and served with whipped cream.

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

Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Prune Whip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Stew the prunes until soft, then pass them through a colander.

Combine and cook

  1. In a bowl, combine the prunes, sugar, beaten egg whites, chopped almonds, chopped walnuts, and vanilla flavoring.

  2. Cook the mixture in a double boiler for 2 to 3 hours.

Serve

  1. 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. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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, sweetness and moisture of the whip.
Egg whites
Trap air and set during cooking to give the whip its light, airy structure.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the beaten egg whites.
Chopped almonds
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the soft texture.
Chopped walnuts
Add crunch and a slightly bitter, nutty flavour against the sweet prunes.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat lets the egg whites set slowly without curdling or scorching. Direct high heat would toughen the proteins and could leave the whip grainy or burnt on the bottom.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Hazelnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, almond, vanilla. 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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