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Stewed Prunes
1 pound of prunes 3 half-pints water Wash the prunes well, and put them in a bowl with three half-pints of cold water, and let them soak for twelve hours. Lift them from the water with a spoon, so as to let all impurities sink to the bottom of the bowl. Put them in a saucepan, and strain the water that the prunes were soaked in over them, being careful to leave all the sediment at the bottom. Now put them where they will simmer slowly, until they are quite tender but unbroken. This will take from two to three hours.
A plain fruit compote from an era when dried prunes arrived dusty, hard as pebbles and unpitted. Most of the length of this recipe is dealing with conditions that no longer exist.
- The measureThree half-pints is three cups, or 24 fluid ounces. That is barely enough to cover a pound of fruit at the start; it swells into the prunes as they soak.
- Why the sediment mattersDried fruit of this period was liable to arrive gritty and dusty. Lifting the prunes out with a spoon and decanting the soaking water off the silt is the whole point of the elaborate handling, and with modern packaged prunes it is unnecessary.
- Timing has collapsedTwo to three hours applies to hard, thoroughly dried whole prunes. Today's pitted prunes are partly rehydrated and packed moist; they soften in 15 to 25 minutes of gentle simmering, and a long soak is optional rather than required. Cooked for three hours they will fall apart.
- Simmer, do not boilThis is the hinge. A rolling boil splits the skins and the fruit collapses; the recipe's insistence on "quite tender but unbroken" depends on bare surface movement only. Keep the pan barely trembling and uncovered enough to concentrate the syrup slightly.
- PitsIf you find unpitted prunes, cook them whole and warn anyone eating them; prunes pitted before cooking are more likely to lose their shape.
- No sugarThe recipe calls for none, and prunes carry a good deal of their own sugar. A strip of lemon peel, a cinnamon stick or a spoonful of sugar added in the last five minutes are all plausible period additions if you want them.
- Yield and servingA pound of prunes with their liquor serves six to eight as a dessert or breakfast fruit. Serve warm or chilled in the cooking syrup, with cream or a plain custard.
Stewed prunes belong to a long tradition of cooking alongside stewed apples and rhubarb: cheap, keeping fruit turned into a soft dessert or a breakfast dish, valued as much for its effect on the digestion as for its flavour. Dried plums travelled and stored where fresh fruit could not, which is why they turn up so reliably in meatless, Lenten and invalid cookery, where a dish had to be nourishing, bland and available in February. The elaborate care over soaking water and sediment here suggests dried fruit that arrived in the kitchen needing thorough cleaning. Commercial pitting and moisture-packing came later, and with them went both the twelve-hour soak and the three-hour simmer.