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Prune Whip
1/3 lb. prunes Whites 5 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice Pick over and wash prunes, then soak several hours in cold water to cover; cook in same water until soft; remove stones and rub prunes through a strainer, add sugar, and cook five minutes; the mixture should be of the consistency of marmalade. Beat whites of eggs until stiff, add prune mixture gradually when cold, and lemon juice. Pile lightly on buttered pudding-dish, bake twenty minutes in slow oven. Serve cold with Boiled Custard.
A baked meringue lightened with prune puree, of the type that filled the dessert chapter of every American cookbook around 1900. It is straightforward, but two things matter: the puree must be fully cold before it meets the whites, and the oven must be genuinely slow.
- Fold cold, or it collapsesWarm puree deflates beaten whites on contact and the whip bakes into a dense, weeping mass. Spread the cooked prune mixture thin and chill it before folding it in a little at a time.
- Slow ovenRead this as the low end of the range, around 275-300F. Higher heat browns the meringue before the interior sets and it will sink dramatically on cooling.
- PrunesOne-third pound is about 5 oz of whole dried prunes, roughly a cup. Modern pitted prunes are softer and moister than the 1900 article; two to three hours' soaking is usually enough, and some need no soaking at all before simmering.
- StrainingRubbing through a sieve was the standard method then. A food processor gives a smoother puree faster, but sieve afterward if the skins leave flecks.
- Cooking the pureeThe five minutes with sugar reduces the mixture. The recipe's own target is the consistency of marmalade: thick enough to mound on a spoon, or the whip will be slack.
- Egg whitesPeriod eggs ran a little smaller than modern large eggs, so four to five modern large whites is about right. Beat to firm, not dry, peaks.
- Dish and yieldA buttered 1 1/2-quart dish suits this quantity, which will probably serve about six. Pile it lightly rather than smoothing it flat.
- The custardBoiled custard here means a stirred pouring custard of milk, egg yolks and sugar cooked until it coats the spoon, around 170-180F, not a baked one. The leftover yolks can go into it.
Whips and "sponges" of fruit puree folded into beaten egg white were a fixture of late nineteenth-century American home cooking, and prune whip turns up repeatedly in the domestic-science cookbooks of the period. The appeal was practical: dried prunes kept well in the pantry, were cheap, and were widely recommended as wholesome, so a cook could produce a light, showy dessert in winter without fresh fruit. The pairing with boiled custard is convenient too, since a meringue dessert leaves the yolks behind. California growers were also promoting prunes in these decades, which may have helped establish the fruit in American desserts as well as at the breakfast table.