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Prune Shortcake
Sift together, twice, two cups pastry flour, four teaspoons baking powder, one half teaspoon salt and three tablepoons sugar. Blend with this mixture one-half cup butter and add three-quarters of a cup milk mixed with the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Make into large or individual cakes as desired.
Use best prunes, soak several hours.
Then let them cook very slowly, without boiling, until tender but not broken, adding the sugar when half done. To one pint prunes allow two tablespoons sugar and a teaspoon lemon juice. When the prunes are done, remove them carefully and cook the juice until like syrup. On the lower layer of shortcake place prunes with syrup poured over. On the top use prunes well drained. Then heap lightly with whipped cream, slightly sweetened.
A biscuit-style shortcake, not a sponge, built like a rich baking-powder dough and split around stewed prunes. The original gives no oven temperature and no baking time, so those are the two things to settle before you start.
- Oven and timingThe original gives no oven temperature or baking time. A hot oven, in the region of 425-450F, for roughly 12 to 15 minutes for a large cake and 10 to 12 for individual ones, suits a biscuit dough of this kind; bake until the tops are set and pale gold.
- Baking powderFour teaspoons to two cups of flour is generous by modern standards; recipes of this period commonly specified around two teaspoons per cup. With modern double-acting baking powder, one tablespoon is ample, and more can leave a metallic edge.
- Pastry flourPastry flour is softer and lower in protein than all-purpose. If you have none, replace each cup with all-purpose measured two tablespoons short of a cup, plus two tablespoons cornstarch, or simply use all-purpose and handle the dough less.
- "Blend with this mixture"This means cutting cold butter into the dry ingredients until the pieces are pea-sized, as for biscuits. Softened or melted butter gives a cakey crumb rather than the flaky layers the dish depends on.
- A pint of prunesDried fruit here is measured by volume, roughly 12 ounces or 340 g of whole prunes. Modern pitted prunes are sold semi-soft and need only an hour's soak, not several; older prunes were dried hard and stony.
- Cook very slowly, without boilingThis is the hinge. Prunes brought to a boil burst and turn to purée; held at a bare simmer they stay whole and glossy. Add the sugar halfway through, as directed, since sugar added at the start firms the skins.
- Two egg yolksYou will have two whites left over. They keep refrigerated for several days, or freeze well, and the recipe gains nothing from being adjusted to use them.
- Yield and assemblyThe recipe gives no yield and leaves the size to the cook. Two cups of flour will make one large cake serving about six, or roughly six individual ones. Split and fill while still warm, and whip the cream shortly before serving.
Prunes were a staple of the American winter pantry in the early twentieth century: dried, cheap, shipped nationwide from the orchards of California's Santa Clara Valley, and available when fresh fruit was not. A shortcake in this tradition is a hot biscuit dough rather than the sponge or sweetened cake layers sold under the name today, and the fruit is whatever the season or the shelf allows: strawberries in June, stewed prunes or dried apricots in February. It was meant to come to the table straight from the oven with cold cream on top. The instruction to remove the fruit and reduce its liquid separately is a bit of restraurant-style care that keeps the prunes intact and thickens the syrup without cornstarch, a technique still worth borrowing for any stewed dried fruit.