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A Tid-Bit of Bacon and Prunes
Soak large prunes in water several hours. Cook until almost done, pit and wrap each prune in a strip of bacon. Fasten with a toothpick and broil carefully until bacon is cooked. Serve hot.
This is a version of the hot canapé usually called devils on horseback, and it works exactly as written. The only real adjustment is that prunes sold today are far softer than those the recipe assumes.
- Skip most of the soakingEarly-century prunes were dried hard and needed hours of water plus simmering. Modern pitted prunes are sold semi-moist; a 10-minute soak in hot water, tea or port is enough, and no pre-cooking is needed.
- PittingThe instruction to pit after cooking is for whole dried prunes. If you buy pitted fruit, that step disappears; if you buy prunes with stones, slit one side and press the pit out once softened.
- Bacon thicknessUse thin-cut streaky bacon, not thick-cut. Thick bacon will not crisp before the prune scorches. A standard rasher cut crosswise gives two strips, each enough to wrap one prune with a small overlap.
- ToothpicksSoak wooden picks in water for 15 minutes before use so they do not char under the broiler, and stab through the bacon overlap so the wrap cannot unroll as the fat renders.
- BroilingSet the rack 4-5 inches below a preheated broiler element and allow about 8-10 minutes, turning once. "Broil carefully" means watching them: rendering bacon fat flares, and the sugars in the prune blacken fast. A 425F oven on a rack set over a sheet pan is the steadier option for a large batch.
- Yield and servingFigure two to three per person as a cocktail bite; a pound of bacon and a pound of prunes makes roughly 30. They must go out hot, as the bacon fat sets waxy within a few minutes of cooling.
- A common additionSome versions of the dish tuck a whole blanched almond or a piece of mango chutney into the cavity left by the pit. The recipe leaves it plain, which is fine, but a filling keeps the sweetness in check.
Bacon-wrapped fruit belongs to a family of hot savouries that came into American entertaining from the British table, where devils on horseback (prunes) sat alongside angels on horseback (oysters) as a course served after the sweet or handed round with drinks. By the 1920s and 1930s the form had become a fixture of the cocktail hour, and books of this kind, aimed at the hostess assembling trays of small hot things, printed variations on the same idea: something sweet or briny, a strip of bacon, a toothpick, a broiler. The hyphenated "tid-bit" in the title is the American form of the word, titbit being the usual British spelling.