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Prune Soup

A soup made with soaked prunes, milk, cornstarch, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Soak prunes in cold water.

  2. Cook the prunes in a little water over medium heat until tender.

  3. Pass the cooked prunes through a sieve.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

Make the soup

  1. In another pot, mix cornstarch with milk.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. Boil for a few more minutes.

  5. Just before serving, stir the prunes into the milk.

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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup body.
Prunes
Provide the main fruit flavor and sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Cornstarch sits undissolved in cold milk and can clump or scorch on the bottom of the pot. Constant stirring keeps it dispersed so it thickens evenly as the starch granules swell with heat.

“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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