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Prune Whip
Sweeten to taste and stew three-quarters of a pound of prunes; when perfectly cold, add the whites of four eggs beaten stiff; stir all of this together till light, put in a dish, and bake twenty minutes; when cold, serve in a larger dish, and cover well with good cream.
A baked fruit meringue of the sort that filled the "invalid cookery" and light-dessert pages of nineteenth-century books. It works, but the original leaves out the oven temperature, the pitting and the size of the dish.
- Pit the prunesPrunes of the period were usually sold with the stones still in. Stew them in water to cover until soft, drain, pit, and press through a sieve or pulse to a coarse purée; this should give roughly a cup and a half of pulp.
- Cold means coldThe instruction to let the purée cool perfectly is the hinge of the recipe. Warm fruit deflates beaten whites on contact and the whip will bake into a dense, weeping layer instead of a foam.
- Fold, do not stir"Stir all of this together till light" is period phrasing for combining. Add the purée to the stiff whites a spoonful at a time and fold with a spatula, keeping as much air as possible.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits it: twenty minutes in a buttered 1½-quart dish will set the whip and brown the top lightly; it will puff and then settle as it cools, which is expected.
- Sweetening"Sweeten to taste" applies to the stewing fruit. Prunes sold today are generally moister than the hard dried fruit of the period, so start with two tablespoons of sugar and taste before adding more.
- The cream"good cream" here means unwhipped heavy or pouring cream, poured around and over the cold whip at the table.
- YieldServes four to six as written. It is best the day it is made, as the meringue weeps once refrigerated overnight.
Prune whip belongs to a family of baked fruit meringues — apple snow, apricot whip, prune soufflé — that spread through American household cookery in the later nineteenth century, when reliable commercial dried fruit and cheap eggs met a new enthusiasm for light, digestible desserts. Dishes of this kind turn up repeatedly in the sickroom and convalescent chapters of period manuals, recommended precisely because they were mild, low in fat and easy to eat. Prunes were a familiar item in the American pantry by the late nineteenth century, supplied both by imports and by the growing California orchards, and they carried a reputation for healthfulness that made them a natural choice for a dessert meant to be virtuous.