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Dessert

Prune Flummery

A baked dessert of prunes folded into stiff egg whites, sweetened with sugar and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Prune Flummery

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. Boil the prunes until they are in pieces.

  2. Remove the pits and rub the prunes through a colander.

  3. Add the sugar to the prunes and mix well.

Make the flummery

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add the prunes to the egg whites, one spoonful at a time, folding gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until slightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 body, and their pulp gives the flummery its soft, sweet texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they trap air and give the flummery its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the prune pulp and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Folding the prunes into the egg whites. Adding the prune pulp gently, one spoonful at a time, keeps the air bubbles in the stiff egg white foam intact. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the flummery bakes up less light.

“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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