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Stewed Prunes and California Raisins
Soak one and a half pounds California prunes during night, drain, then place them in enamelled saucepan with a half pound California seeded raisins, add a piece cinnamon with two ounces sugar, one gill each claret and water and the rind of half a sound lemon. Cover the pan and let gently cook for twenty-five minutes, gently shuffling pan occasionally. Remove to a table and let stand without uncovering for thirty minutes, remove cinnamon and lemon rind, transfer to a compotier and serve.
A simple dried-fruit compote that depends almost entirely on restraint: a low flame, a covered pan, and a long rest off the heat. A few of its terms and quantities need translating.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fl oz. So half a cup claret and half a cup water for the whole pan — barely enough to cover, which is the point. The prunes release their soaking liquid as they heat.
- Soaking, and what to do with the waterAn overnight soak suits the hard, heavily dried prunes of the period. Modern pitted prunes are sold moist and need three to four hours at most, or none at all if they are soft. The recipe says to drain; if your fruit is already plump, skip the soak and add a splash more water instead.
- "California prunes" and "seeded raisins"Both mean the ordinary supermarket article. "Seeded" in period usage means the seeds have been removed, not that they are present — Muscat raisins were sold seeded or unseeded. Any dark raisin works.
- The enamelled saucepanSpecified because bare iron and unlined copper react with wine and give the fruit a metallic edge and a grey cast. Enamelled cast iron or stainless steel does the same job now.
- Gentle cooking means gentleTwenty-five minutes at a bare tremble, lid on. A real simmer will burst the prunes and reduce the small amount of liquid to nothing. "Shuffling the pan" is a slide across the burner to move the fruit without a spoon, which would break it.
- The thirty-minute restThe hinge of the recipe. Covered and undisturbed off the heat, the fruit finishes plumping in its own steam and the syrup thickens as it cools. Cutting this short leaves thin, watery syrup and firm centres.
- The lemon rind"Sound" means unblemished. Take it off in wide strips with a peeler, avoiding the white pith, and pull it out at the end as directed or the dish turns bitter.
- The claretAny dry red — Bordeaux-style, or anything unoaked and not sweet. It cooks down but does not cook off entirely, so the finished compote carries alcohol.
- Compotier and yieldA compotier is a footed glass or porcelain dish for stewed fruit; any shallow serving bowl does. Two pounds of dried fruit gives six to eight servings, good warm or cold, with cream or alongside roast pork or goose.
Stewed prunes were a fixture of the American and European table from breakfast through to dessert in the late nineteenth century, and this version — wine, cinnamon, lemon peel — is the older European compote rather than the invalid's stewed fruit. The insistence on "California" prunes and raisins reflects a real commercial shift: French plum varieties, above all the d'Agen, had been established in California's Santa Clara and Sacramento valleys from the 1850s onward, and by the time this book appeared the state was displacing France and Spain as the supplier of dried fruit to American kitchens. Naming the origin may well have been partly patriotism and partly a guarantee of grade, though that is inference rather than established fact. The pairing of dried fruit with red wine and a stick of cinnamon is much older than either, and belongs to the same tradition as the spiced fruit compotes served with roast meats across northern Europe.