Tags and Prunes
16 January 2021 11:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeFor my future reference: Tag Wrangling, take 2!
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This seems also as good a random place as any to mention a surprisingly successful wartime dessert, Crumbed Prunes. It gets mentioned disparagingly (like Vinegar Cake, which is actually an excellent fruitcake recipe) as an example of dire 1940s food, but the result is much more luxurious thgan one would expect.
You stew some chopped-up prunes in a little water until you can purée them, make some custard (I used an egg in a quarter of a pint of milk, but custard powder would probably do as well if you don't have a spare egg for the meal), and dry out some breadcrumbs in a frying-pan or low oven. Then immediately before serving, you combine the prunes with the breadcrumbs to form a sticky, crunchy mixture, then for each serving put a dessert-spoon of custard on the bottom of a small dish or serving cup, top this with prune crunch, and put more custard on top. Half the interest in the dish is in the contrast of textures, so you don't want to mix everything too early and let it go soggy.
I mixed in a teaspoon of demerara sugar with the crumbs, as recommended if possible, in order to add more crunch, but I'm not sure it was actually detectable. Prunes and custard is a classic combination, of course, and I suppose this is the 1940s equivalent of mixing muesli into your skimmed-milk yoghurt ;-p
I got two fairly generous portions out of one egg, ¼ pint of milk, four or so prunes, and half a cup of breadcrumbs: the actual recipe is for "1 breakfastcup cooked prunes, 1 breakfastcup crisped breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon sugar and ½ pint thick custard" to serve four people.
(The potato drop scones were a complete failure, though; better stick to ordinary potato pan scones. And the American pancakes with 'aquafaba' were basically exactly the same as ordinary Scotch pancakes, despite the mixture's having a convincing soufflé texture after ten minutes of whipping -- it didn't make any difference, and was a vast amount of extra effort.)
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(From https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=23 )
This seems also as good a random place as any to mention a surprisingly successful wartime dessert, Crumbed Prunes. It gets mentioned disparagingly (like Vinegar Cake, which is actually an excellent fruitcake recipe) as an example of dire 1940s food, but the result is much more luxurious thgan one would expect.
You stew some chopped-up prunes in a little water until you can purée them, make some custard (I used an egg in a quarter of a pint of milk, but custard powder would probably do as well if you don't have a spare egg for the meal), and dry out some breadcrumbs in a frying-pan or low oven. Then immediately before serving, you combine the prunes with the breadcrumbs to form a sticky, crunchy mixture, then for each serving put a dessert-spoon of custard on the bottom of a small dish or serving cup, top this with prune crunch, and put more custard on top. Half the interest in the dish is in the contrast of textures, so you don't want to mix everything too early and let it go soggy.
I mixed in a teaspoon of demerara sugar with the crumbs, as recommended if possible, in order to add more crunch, but I'm not sure it was actually detectable. Prunes and custard is a classic combination, of course, and I suppose this is the 1940s equivalent of mixing muesli into your skimmed-milk yoghurt ;-p
I got two fairly generous portions out of one egg, ¼ pint of milk, four or so prunes, and half a cup of breadcrumbs: the actual recipe is for "1 breakfastcup cooked prunes, 1 breakfastcup crisped breadcrumbs, 1 tablespoon sugar and ½ pint thick custard" to serve four people.
(The potato drop scones were a complete failure, though; better stick to ordinary potato pan scones. And the American pancakes with 'aquafaba' were basically exactly the same as ordinary Scotch pancakes, despite the mixture's having a convincing soufflé texture after ten minutes of whipping -- it didn't make any difference, and was a vast amount of extra effort.)
no subject
Date: 2021-01-17 09:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-01-17 03:44 pm (UTC)Admittedly I don't actually know what American pancakes are supposed to be like, but I'd have expected the much looser and more bubbly batter to make some kind of difference to the outcome!
Since the chickpea water is basically a waste product and had set solid in the fridge, I thought I might as well find something to do with it. It does seem to substitute quite acceptably for recipes that use non-whipped eggs -- but then so does vinegar, or golden syrup ;-p