Boil prunes until very soft; remove the stones. Mash well; add the yolks of 4 beaten eggs, 3 tablespoonfuls of sugar, 1 cup of bread-crumbs, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla, ½ cup of chopped nuts, and the whites of the eggs beaten stiff. Put in a well-buttered pudding-dish and bake in a moderate oven until done. Serve cold.
A short recipe that assumes the cook knows how much fruit a pudding needs — the prune quantity is simply left out. The rest is a standard folded-egg baked pudding and behaves predictably.
- The missing quantityNo amount of prunes is given. Judging by the four eggs, cup of crumbs and three tablespoons of sugar, roughly a pound of dried prunes cooked down to about two cups of pulp is the sensible reading, but this is an inference, not what the book says.
- Moderate oven350F. In a buttered dish of about 1½ quarts, expect 40 to 50 minutes; "until done" means the centre is set and a knife comes out clean, with the top puffed and lightly browned.
- Fold, do not stirThe stiff whites go in last and are the only leavening. Fold them through the heavy prune mixture in two or three additions with a spatula — beaten in with a spoon, the pudding bakes dense and rubbery.
- Pitted prunesModern dried prunes are almost always sold pitted, so the stoning step disappears. Simmer them covered in water just to cover until collapsing, 20 to 30 minutes, then drain well; a wet pulp will not set.
- Bread-crumbsDry crumbs from stale white bread, not the coarse seasoned crumbs sold for coating. Fresh soft crumbs work but absorb less, so the pudding stays looser.
- NutsWalnuts or almonds suit the prunes, though the book does not specify which nut. Chop them fine enough that they suspend rather than sink.
- ServingServe cold, as directed — it firms considerably as it cools and slices better. Whipped cream or a thin custard would suit it, though the book calls for no sauce. Serves about six, judging by the quantities.
Prunes were one of the cheapest and most reliable dried fruits in the northern European larder, and a baked pudding built on prune pulp, crumbs and separated eggs turns up across Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia under various names. The "Dutch" label in an American cookbook of this vintage is loose: it was applied both to the Netherlands and, by way of Deutsch, to German and Pennsylvania German cooking, so the attribution tells you more about how publishers organised a book of national dishes than about any specific origin. The structure — fruit puree lightened with beaten whites and bound with breadcrumbs rather than flour — belongs to a family of thrift puddings that stretched a few eggs and stale bread into a dessert, and it is the same logic behind prune whip, a fixture of American home cooking well into the twentieth century.