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Prune Filling
¼ pound prunes
½ cup rhubarb or canned pine- 2 tablespoons gelatin apple-juice
4 tablespoons cold water
½ cup whipped cream
½ cup sugar
Wash the prunes, soak overnight in water to cover, and cook slowly until soft. Remove pits and rub pulp through a coarse sieve. Soak the gelatin in cold water. When soft, add it to the boiling prune pulp and stir until the gelatin dissolves. Add sugar and fruit-juice. When the filling has cooled, fold in the Chi ped cream.
A gelatin-set fruit filling meant to go between cake layers, from the era when powdered gelatin was still a novelty worth using generously. The ingredient list is set in two columns and reads scrambled; the quantities are ¼ lb prunes, 2 tablespoons gelatin, 4 tablespoons cold water, ½ cup sugar, ½ cup rhubarb or canned pineapple juice, and ½ cup whipped cream.
- The hinge: pineapple juiceFresh or unpasteurised pineapple juice contains bromelain, which digests gelatin and leaves the filling permanently soupy. The recipe specifies canned pineapple juice, and canned or bottled juice is what must be used. Rhubarb juice poses no such problem.
- Two tablespoons of gelatin is a lotTwo tablespoons is roughly two to two and a half envelopes, about 14–18 g, which against the pulp and liquid here will set very firm — sliceable rather than spreadable. One envelope gives a softer filling that still holds between layers.
- PrunesA quarter pound is roughly ten to a dozen dried prunes. Modern pitted prunes are sold already softened and need only an hour's soak, or a simmer of 15–20 minutes in water to cover, rather than an overnight soak.
- Rubbing through a sieveA coarse sieve was the standard purée tool of the period. A food processor or immersion blender does the job in seconds; sieve afterwards only if you want the skins out.
- Dissolving the gelatinBloom it in the cold water for five minutes, then stir into the hot pulp off the heat. Do not return it to a hard boil once the gelatin is in — prolonged boiling weakens the set.
- Folding in the creamCool the prune mixture to room temperature and no further. If it has begun to set, the whipped cream will break it into lumps rather than lightening it; if it is still warm, the cream will deflate.
- YieldAbout 1½ to 2 cups, enough to fill two or three 8-inch layers. Assemble the cake while the filling is still soft and chill it to set.
Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published household books aimed at the middle-class woman running a kitchen without staff, and the fillings chapter reflects what was then a new convenience: reliable packaged granulated gelatin, which by the 1910s and 1920s had moved gelatin desserts and fillings out of the professional kitchen and into ordinary homes. Prunes were the workhorse dried fruit of the American pantry, cheap year-round and heavily promoted by California growers, and they turn up constantly in cakes, puddings and fillings of the period. The rhubarb-or-pineapple choice is telling — both supply acid and a bright note against the prune's heaviness, and the book specifies canned pineapple rather than fresh.