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Dessert

Spiced Prunes

A sweet and tart preserve of prunes stewed in vinegar and sugar, thickened with apricots and cornstarch, folded with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and apricot work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 217 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Spiced Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Stew the prunes in a syrup made from vinegar and sugar.

Make the apricot mixture

  1. In a separate pot, heat the chopped stewed apricots and thicken with cornstarch dissolved in a little water.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cool, gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

  2. Serve the dish ice cold.

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. Vinegar + apricottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Apricot + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried prunes
Form the main body of the dish, softened by stewing in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the syrup, balancing the sweetness of the sugar.
Cornstarch
Thickens the apricot mixture as it heats, giving it body.
Egg whites
Fold in to add lightness and airy texture to the cooled mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently once the mixture is cool. Beaten egg whites hold air, and they deflate if the mixture is still warm or is stirred vigorously. Cooling first and folding gently keeps the foam intact and the texture light.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, egg. 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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