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Dessert

Dried Plum Pie

A pie made with soaked dried plums, sugar, butter, spices, eggs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 710 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Dried Plum Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Soak the dried plums in cold water for several hours.

  2. Stew the plums until tender, then mash them by rubbing through a colander.

  3. Beat two eggs, saving the white of one egg.

  4. Add ¾ cup of sugar and ½ cup of butter to the mashed plums, along with spices to taste.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a deep pie pan with puff pastry, fill it with the plum mixture, and bake until done.

  2. Frost the top with the beaten egg white and return to a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown slightly.

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. Plum + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together710 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dried plums
Provide the main fruit flavour and a soft, moist filling when stewed and mashed.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes, while the reserved white gives a glossy, browned top.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown slightly in the oven.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that holds the soft plum filling.

The step that matters

Frost the top with the beaten egg white and return to a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown slightly.. Egg white applied as a thin, even coat gives a glossy finish, and brief heat browns it. Overbaking can dry the filling and darken the top too far.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Plumthe original

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