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Health Figs, Prunes or Apricots
1 pound figs, prunes or apricots 4 cups water 1 cup Karo Grated rind 1/2 orange or 1 lemon Wash the fruit thoroughly and place in a double boiler top with the Karo, water and grated rind. Cover and let stand over night. Then place over hot water and steam until the fruit is very tender-from two and a half to three hours; sweeten more if desired.
A stewed dried-fruit compote of the kind that anchored a great many American breakfasts before cold cereal took over. The method is sound, but the timing assumes dried fruit far drier and harder than what a supermarket sells now.
- KaroKaro is corn syrup, and in this period the brand was sold in light (clear) and dark (caramel-tinted) forms. Use light corn syrup for figs or apricots; dark will muddy the colour and dominate the flavour. One cup to a pound of fruit is generously sweet by current taste, and the syrup can be cut to half a cup without hurting the texture.
- Cooking timeTwo and a half to three hours suits the harder, drier fruit of the period. Modern dried apricots and pitted prunes are sold considerably moister; after an overnight soak they will often be tender in well under an hour. Dried figs, being tougher and seedier, may want longer. Check at the half hour and stop when a fruit yields to a spoon.
- The double boilerThe point of steaming over hot water rather than direct heat is that the fruit never boils, so it swells whole instead of collapsing into jam and the corn syrup cannot scorch. Keep the water at a bare simmer and the fruit covered the whole time.
- The overnight soakThis is the step that does most of the work. The fruit draws in water and syrup cold, so it cooks evenly rather than sealing on the outside. Cover it and leave it on the counter, or refrigerate in warm weather.
- Grated rindHalf an orange or a whole lemon, grated fine, and only the coloured zest — the white pith turns bitter over a long steam. Unwaxed or well-scrubbed fruit is worth seeking out for the same reason it was then: the peel is going into the pot.
- Yield and servingA pound of dried fruit swells to roughly six to eight breakfast servings. Serve warm or chilled in its own syrup, with cream or over hot cereal. It keeps a week refrigerated and the syrup thickens as it stands.
Recipes like this one come from a genre of cookbooklets published by food manufacturers — the repeated call for Karo points to a booklet issued in the interest of the brand, then made by the Corn Products Refining Company. Corn syrup had been produced commercially in the United States since the later nineteenth century, and the Karo brand name dates from the early twentieth; it was promoted as a cheaper and more easily digested sweetener than cane sugar, a claim that carried extra weight during the First World War, when sugar supplies were restricted and conservation was urged on households and manufacturers pressed substitutes on cooks. The word "Health" in the title reflects the era's preoccupation with regularity: stewed prunes and figs were prescribed as much as they were enjoyed, and appeared on breakfast tables in sanitariums, boarding houses and hotels alike. The overnight soak and long steam are a pre-refrigeration habit as well as a culinary one — dried fruit was the winter fruit, available when nothing fresh was, and this method made it edible without a stove watched all morning.