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Dessert

Prune Pie

A baked pie filled with prunes, sugar, and lemon juice, topped with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Prune Pie

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.

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes.

  2. Soak the prunes in cold water until covered.

  3. Cook the prunes in the water until soft.

  4. Remove the stones from the prunes.

  5. Cut the prunes into quarters.

  6. Mix the prunes with sugar and lemon juice.

  7. Reduce the prune cooking water to 14 tablespoons.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie plate with the crust.

  2. Fill the crust with the prunes.

  3. Pour the reduced liquid over the prunes.

  4. Dot the top with butter.

  5. Sprinkle flour over the top.

  6. Bake with an upper crust at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Form the soft, sweet fruit filling that makes up the body of the pie.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the prunes and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich flavour of the prunes.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the filling sets rather than running out.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top crust brown as it bakes.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and bakes golden.

The step that matters

Reduce the prune cooking water to 14 tablespoons.. Reducing the liquid concentrates its flavour and thickens it slightly. Too much thin liquid left in the pie can make the filling watery and the crust soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter. 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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