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Dessert

Jellied Prunes

A sweet jelly made from prunes, sugar, lemon juice, and gelatin, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jellied Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes.

  2. Soak the prunes in cold water overnight.

  3. Cook the prunes slowly in the soaking water until tender.

  4. Remove the stones from the prunes.

  5. Cut the prunes into quarters.

Make the jelly

  1. Make a syrup with the prune soaking water and sugar, ensuring you have 2 cups of liquid.

  2. Soften the gelatine and dissolve it in the hot syrup.

  3. Add the lemon juice and strain the mixture.

  4. When the jelly is partially set, add the prunes.

  5. Turn the mixture into a mold.

  6. Chill until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve with sugar and cream or 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.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 fruit flavour and tender pieces suspended in the jelly.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and balances the tartness of the lemon and prunes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavour.
Prune soaking water
Carries concentrated prune flavour and forms the liquid base of the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the prunes when the jelly is partially set. If the jelly is still too liquid, the prune pieces sink to the bottom; if it has set fully, they will not distribute evenly. Gelatine needs to be at a syrupy, partly thickened stage so the fruit stays suspended as it chills.

“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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