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Dessert

Prunes in Jelly

A dessert of prunes cooked in water, sweetened with sugar, lemon, and sherry, set with gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Prunes in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wash the prunes well.

  2. Place the prunes in a saucepan with the water.

  3. Cover and cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the prunes from the saucepan and take out the stones.

  5. Return the fruit to the liquid.

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in the cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Add the soaked gelatin to the saucepan and stir until dissolved.

  3. Stir in the sugar and lemon juice.

  4. Remove from heat and add the sherry.

  5. Wait until the mixture cools or begins to thicken, then stir to mix the fruit evenly.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mold.

  2. Serve with whipped cream or custard.

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 + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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, body and natural sweetness as they soften during slow cooking.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the sweet fruit.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth to the jelly's flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the sherry and waiting before stirring. Alcohol evaporates readily when hot, so adding sherry off the heat preserves its aroma. Letting the mixture cool or thicken before stirring keeps the prune pieces suspended evenly rather than sinking, because the gelatine is just beginning to set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry. 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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