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Dessert

Prune Cake

A moist cake made with stewed prunes, sugar, butter, eggs, spices, and a chocolate‑sugar filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Prune Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter, then mix in the egg yolks until well combined.

  3. Add the sieved prunes. Dissolve the baking soda in the prunes before mixing them into the batter.

  4. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  6. Stir in the dissolved chocolate.

  7. Fold in half of the beaten egg whites gently.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook ½ cup sugar and ½ cup water until it threads from a spoon.

  2. Add the syrup to the remaining beaten egg whites and beat until thick enough to spread.

Finish

  1. Spread the filling on the cooled cake.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites lighten the cake and form the filling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when cooked to a syrup, gives the filling its body.
Stewed prunes
Add moisture, sweetness and the dark, fruity flavor of the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic prunes to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cook the filling syrup to the threading stage. Sugar syrup must reach the right concentration to set the whites into a spreadable filling. Undercooked syrup stays runny, while overcooked syrup turns hard and grainy when mixed into the whites.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, cinnamon, allspice, chocolate. 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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