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Dessert

Gateaux Aux Prunes

A French prune cake made with prunes, sugar, gelatin, lemon, brandy, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Cook the prunes

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

  2. Remove the prunes, take out the stones, and crack the kernels.

Make the set mixture

  1. Add the kernels, brandy, lemon juice, lemon rind, cochineal, and dissolved gelatine to the pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Pour into a border mold and let it set.

Serve

  1. Once set, turn out and 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 fruit flavour and soft body of the cake.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its shape when turned out.
Sugar
Sweetens the prunes and helps them soften during simmering.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth that complement the prunes.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for 20 minutes. Gelatine only sets reliably when fully dissolved and mixed evenly into the hot liquid. Boiling the mixture for the stated time reduces the liquid and helps the flavours concentrate, while sufficient cooling before pouring keeps the set firm.

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.

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