Skip to main content
Dessert

Prune Pie

A pie filled with stewed prunes topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Prune Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pass the stewed prunes through a colander.

  2. Add the lemon juice and sugar to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

Make and bake the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Gradually add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the beaten egg whites.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pie.

  4. Brown lightly in the oven.

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).

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Stewed prunes
Provide the main body and sweet, concentrated fruit flavour of the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the meringue topping and sets when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when added gradually, stabilises the whipped egg white meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks to trap air and form a stable foam. Under-whipped whites collapse and weep, while sugar added gradually helps keep the foam glossy and stable.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes