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Dessert

Prune Cup Cakes

A sweet cake made with prunes, eggs, sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Prune Cup Cakes

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 batter

  1. Cook prunes until tender but not too soft, seed and chop into pieces.

  2. Combine prunes, egg or yolks, sugar, melted butter, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg in a mixing bowl.

  3. Beat the mixture for 1 minute.

  4. Sift together flour and baking powder, then add alternately with sour milk.

  5. Mix the batter well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased and floured pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 moisture, sweetness and a dense, rich texture to the cupcake crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter, helping the cupcakes hold their shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cupcakes rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cupcake crumb as it sets in the oven.
Sour milk
Reacts with the leavening and adds moisture and a slight tang to the batter.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and sour milk alternately. Alternating flour and liquid and mixing only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cupcakes stay tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, flour, milk. 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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