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Prune Toast

A toast topped with boiled prunes, butter, sherry, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Prune Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove pits from prunes after boiling them until soft.

  2. Cut the crust from the bread and brown it in hot butter on both sides.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the prunes over the toasted bread.

  2. Sweeten to taste and add sherry.

  3. Serve with 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.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Provide the main fruity body and sweetness once softened by boiling.
Butter
Browns the bread in hot fat, adding roasted flavour and a golden surface.
Bread
Acts as the crisp, absorbent base that holds the prune topping.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine aroma and a touch of acidity to the prunes.

The step that matters

Browning the bread in butter on both sides. Bread that is pale or only lightly toasted absorbs the prune liquid and turns soggy. Deep, even browning in hot butter creates a crisp, flavourful surface that resists moisture.

“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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