Name: Stuffed Prunes
Ingredients: fine large prunes; nuts or fondant; granulated sugar

Why it works: Nuts and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,228 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Stuffed Prunes

Ingredients

fine large prunes
nuts or fondant
granulated sugar

Directions

Prepare

Select fine, large prunes and wash them.
Steam the prunes for one hour.
Remove the stones from the prunes.

Fill and coat

Fill the prunes with nuts or fondant.
Roll the stuffed prunes in granulated sugar.

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.

Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes: Provide the soft, sweet fruit body that holds the filling and softens when steamed.
Nuts or fondant: Supply a rich filling that contrasts with the soft prune and adds sweetness.
Granulated sugar: Forms a sweet, slightly crisp coating on the outside of the stuffed prunes.

“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.