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Stewed Prunes
Prunes are very good done this way. Take a pound of prunes, soak them twenty-four hours in water. Put them on the fire in a cupful of water and half a bottle of light red wine, quarter of a pound of sugar and, if you like it, a pinch of cinnamon or mixed spice. Let it all stew till the liquor is much reduced and the prunes are well flavored. Let them get cold, and serve them in a glass dish with whipped cream.
A compote that needs almost nothing changed except the soaking, which was written for a much harder prune than the one you will buy today.
- Skip or shorten the soakThe twenty-four-hour soak suits a much drier, harder dried prune than is sold today. Modern moist-pack pitted prunes need little or no soaking; if yours are leathery, an hour in warm water is plenty.
- Half a bottle of wineReckoning on a modern 750 ml bottle, that is about 375 ml, or about 1 1/2 cups; bottle sizes in 1915 were not standardised, so treat it as approximate. "Light red" means something thin and low in tannin — a Beaujolais or a young Loire red rather than a heavy Cabernet.
- SugarA quarter pound is a generous 1/2 cup granulated. If you prefer it less sweet you can cut it to a third of a cup; the liquid will simply reduce to a thinner syrup.
- The reduction is the pointCook uncovered at a bare simmer, 30 to 40 minutes, until the liquid is glossy and coats a spoon. If you stop while it is still watery the prunes taste boiled rather than steeped; if you reduce too far it will be stiff and sticky once cold, so pull it while it still runs.
- SpiceA pinch means a pinch. A single small cinnamon stick, or a couple of cloves and a strip of orange peel, fished out before chilling, does more than ground spice stirred through, which clouds the syrup.
- AlcoholA long open simmer drives off much but not all of the alcohol. This is served cold and undiluted, so it is not a dish for children.
- Serving and yieldA pound of prunes with this much syrup serves four to six. Chill thoroughly — the syrup thickens as it cools — and whip the cream unsweetened to balance the sugar.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck and published in 1915, gathering recipes from Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion. That origin explains the register of a dish like this: it is domestic, cheap, made from storecupboard dried fruit and whatever ordinary red wine was to hand, and it was set down from memory rather than copied from a professional kitchen. Stewed dried fruit in wine and spice has a long history across northern Europe, where prunes were a winter staple long before fresh fruit could be shipped in.