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Prune Pone or Bread
Scald one-half pint cornmeal; stir into it two cups of flour (preferably one of graham and one of white); onehalf cup molasses; one cup each sour milk and washed, chopped, dried prunes. Use with milk one scant teaspoon soda. Steam in a mould three hours or bake two (moderate oven). Serve with sweet sauce or rich milk.
A steamed brown bread in the Boston mould, sweetened with molasses and studded with prunes. The wording is compressed even by 1900 standards, so a few readings need spelling out.
- The measurementsHalf a pint of cornmeal is one cup. Two cups of flour, ideally one cup graham (coarse whole wheat) and one cup white, plus half a cup molasses, one cup sour milk and one cup chopped prunes.
- "Use with milk one scant teaspoon soda"Most likely means dissolve the soda in the sour milk before combining. The soda needs the acid in the milk to lift a batter this heavy, and dry-stirred soda can leave bitter streaks.
- Sour milkNot spoiled milk from the refrigerator. Cultured buttermilk is the direct modern substitute; failing that, a cup of whole milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar stirred in and left ten minutes.
- Scalding the mealThe recipe does not say what to scald the meal with; boiling water is the usual reading, though scalding milk was also used. Wet the meal through with the hot liquid and let it stand until it swells and cools, which softens the grit; skip it and the loaf reads sandy.
- The mouldA one to two quart pudding basin, a coffee can, or a covered pudding mould, greased and filled no more than two-thirds. Cover tightly with a lid or foil tied down, and stand it on a rack in a pot with boiling water reaching halfway up. Top the water up as it boils away over three hours.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. Baked, the loaf takes about two hours in a covered mould or a greased loaf pan; a skewer should come out clean and the crumb will be dark and dense rather than springy.
- The prunesDried plums, pitted, rinsed and chopped to raisin size. Tossing them in a spoonful of the measured flour keeps them from sinking to the bottom of a wet batter.
- Sweet sauceCommonly a hard sauce (creamed butter and powdered sugar, sometimes with a little vanilla or nutmeg) or a thin vanilla pudding sauce. "Rich milk" means unskimmed, creamy milk poured over.
- YieldAbout one loaf. Steamed brown breads slice cleanly only once cool.
Pone is a word taken from Algonquian by early English colonists, describing a baked cornmeal cake, and it stayed attached to cornmeal breads across the American South and New England long after the technique had drifted. This particular formula belongs to the New England brown bread family: cornmeal and graham flour bound with molasses, raised with soda and sour milk, and cooked in a covered mould set in boiling water, a method often associated with kitchens that lacked dependable ovens and one that produces a moist, close-grained loaf. Its appearance in a book organised by fruit reflects a common turn-of-the-century preoccupation with prunes, which were cheap, shelf-stable, promoted by California growers, and recommended by domestic writers of the period as much for digestion as for flavour. Adding them to an already frugal bread was an economical way to sweeten and enrich it without more sugar or eggs.