Skip to main content
Dessert

Gateaux Aux Prunes

A French prune cake made with prunes, sugar, gelatine, lemon, brandy, water, and cochineal, set in a mold and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon 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 ↓

Gateaux Aux Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Boil the prunes in the water and sugar until soft.

  2. Remove the prunes from the pot and take out the stones.

  3. Crack the kernels.

Cook the mixture

  1. Add the cracked kernels to the prunes along with the brandy, lemon juice, lemon rind, cochineal, and dissolved gelatine.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a border mould.

  2. Let it set.

  3. Turn the set cake out of the mould.

  4. Serve with whipped cream in the center.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon 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 body, flavour and sweetness of the cake.
Gelatine
Sets the cooked fruit mixture into a firm cake that holds its shape when turned out.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the prunes soften during cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich prune flavour.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 20 minutes. Gelatine sets by cooling, and prolonged boiling can weaken its setting strength. Brandy's aroma also fades with heat, so timing matters for both firmness and flavour.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes