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shing prism all under the sign of propriety in the twinkling of a bedpost prunes and prisms passed into literary idiom an easy way to catch women between the rock of sedimented virginity and the hard place of harlotry d h lawrence scholarship boy and one time junior clerk at a surgical appliances factory mocks a character for her prunes and prisms manner and when jo in little women yearns to be a boy and run away with teddy and have a capital time she breaks off and moans prunes and prisms are my doom since she is a girl she must be proper and stop at home oscar wilde s governess miss prism may be missing her prunes and her 3 volume novel but her easily mocked high tones remain dickens that rag and bone man didn t invent the prunish woman the old maid was a figure of fun long before he steamed into print and if we unflinchingly follow the history of the prune it turns out that it was once associated with the oldest of maids behind the prune wielding disciplined ranks of the governess the nurse and the headmistress lounges the most venerable professional woman of them all the whore we still sometimes call a brothel a stew and it is because of the innocuous stewed prune a 1612 collection of satirical poems called the knave of hearts features a whoring knave who takes burnt wine stew d prunes a punk to solace him and in a similar collection published a year earlier the knave of spades a wanton entices a young man into her house of vice he to his liquor falls while she unto her maids for cakes stew d prunes and pippins calls some scholars claim that dried cakes and stewed prunes were considered prophylactic against the pox and used as prescriptions for syphilitics but whatever the reason most scholars who interest themselves in ladies of the night agree that a bowl of prunes was the trading sign of a brothel in wit s miserie or the world s madnesse 1596 thomas lodge says of a bawd you shall know her dwelling by a dish of stewd pruins in the window and two or three fleering wenches sit knitting or sewing in her shop and shakespeare goes to town on prunes and brothels in the merry wives of windsor master slender pleads lack of appetite for food and women claiming sexual mishap has put him out of action i bruised my shin th other day with playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence three veneys for a dish of stewed prunes and by my troth i cannot abide the smell of hot meat since and in measure for measure a play which gleefully compromises attempts at astringent morality shakespeare gets right to it and relishes the visual pun between the creased globular fruit and a pair of bollocks nestled in a certain kind of dish elbow s wife is led into a brothel by her craving for prunes pompey explains to the law that she was great with child and longing saving your honour s reverence for stewed prunes sir we had but two in the house which at that very distant time stood as it were in a fruit dish a dish of some three pence your honours have seen such dishes they are not china dishes but very good dishes our post industrial association of the prune with dour desiccation is a mean spirited corruption of earlier ages earthy and bawdy prune play a prune can be more than a faded plum juicy and vital and a little sultry with fruit sugars it might never intend you to remember the plum this prune is bold not grudging or grasping preserved into opulence it pleases itself it doesn t mourn or imitate its juvenile state but flashing black as the pupil of your eye transforms it into something else again it is as scented and reflective as tobacco and it takes you from the schoolroom to the brothel and all regions between and beyond this prune the prune of my dreams met me recently in france i had been happily invited along on a women s college alumnae tour of the dordogne valley these were women reconvening after time in the full glow of life and together we spent an idyllic week of food wine and conversation the dordogne lays an expansive seasoned table for its guests its culinary specialties are mostly dark and unctuous duck goose foie gras truffles and walnut oil it is food that takes time to prepare and time to eat it eases the clockworks of conversation back to a sauntering pace and doctors lawyers senators and novelists found themselves suffused in the lamplight of conviviality a linguist gnawed on yet another leg of duck confit as she explained to an enthralled audience the symbolism of the string skirts worn by such well fed prehistoric beauties as the venus of willendorf a casual mention of lace elicited an impromptu lesson on death bobbins whittled by the makers of filigree to commemorate the execution of bloodthirsty murderers a porcelain expert class of 1950 fois gras trembling on the end of her fork described how she once landed a distressed hot air balloon on a boat in the middle of the chesapeake bay by day our bus wove across a region made of castles and cliff dwellings rich furrowed soil and corrugated precipices we trekked into painted caves where tens of thousands of years ago bears bedded down together and upon waking flexed and sharpened their claws on the walls carving a tally of another year the folds and creases of the landscape accommodated this group brought together by friendship and education by plenty by loss and by the diverse pleasures of society of one s kind across the course of seven breakfasts seven lunches and seven dinners no one ever set a prune before us virginia woolf s algorithm of food and education and sex had been inverted and i had eaten her boys meal with girls but i wasn t happy about the still sacrificed prune that third sex so on saturday morning i said a quick goodbye to the breakfasting sisterhood and set out with an empty bag and my dubious french at the ready it was market day in sarlat and i found the glorious agen pruneaux outside the hotel doors in the bustle of narrow cobbled streets a valley away from the dordogne agen is the cradle of prune civilization the jet black fruits are made from the ente plum and their sweetness comes from being tree matured and carefully dried to preserve their sugars i had heard of these prunes even tasted what i knew to be an over dried specimen in england and i was determined to load my suitcase with the genuine fleshy gems i made my way between stalls groaning with sausages fish mustards oils vegetables cheeses strawberries until finally i found in the shadow of the old church a stand full of the treasured prunes ranked in size labeled by humidity they glistened under the quiet husbandry of a gentleman dressed in a plum coloured stripy sweater and plum coloured corduroy trousers his scholarly face tilted over his produce as if listening to them i bought many bags from monsieur pruneaux and then sought out a quiet stretch of medieval wall to sit on solemnly i dipped into my treasure the prunes were so tender that the pits slid silkily from the flesh and the flesh itself was almost cucumber green against the purple turned to carbon skins they were tense and then yielding to the teeth and they tasted of seasons turned of nightfall the flavour was as broad as a thumb but bright too each small parcel had enfolded its sugars and its sunlight and compressed them like coal i brought the prunes back to the hotel and fed some to my new friends and then watched as their faces registered the marvel this is a prune b and i ate most of the prunes straight from the bag across that week and on the long train ride back north a thoughtful chew and an archaic smile their only condiment but once back in london i wanted to make a prunes and custard dish that both redeemed and paid homage to the ridiculed genre of prunishness i began with the idea of a clafoutis a simple french dish of baked custard and fruit the name of this dish might some think find its origin in the word meaning to fill up to stuff but other sources suggest a root meaning to affix with nails since clafoutis is most commonly made with cherries which film over with a skin of custard and bleed slightly as they cook i m convinced of the latter meaning surely the dish acquired its name because it looks like stigmata but mine would be made with prunes and there is a breton version of the clafoutis slightly sturdier in consistency made with prunes it is called a far breton i decided to follow a far recipe but borrow a little something from the clafoutis too in a clafoutis it is traditional to leave the stones in the cherries to impart a hint of almond flavour to the pudding i thought i could mimic this and get something of a brothelly to stuff meaning in my prunes by removing their pits and replacing them with a nub of marzipan in far breton and similar dishes the prunes are sometimes soaked in tea or armagnac to plump them up my prunes had no need of such hydration but it would be a shame to spurn spirits altogether especially since i had taken care to procure a small bottle of prune d ente eau de vie from the sarlat market so i added a generous tablespoon to my batter my final ingredient was a smuggled one before taking the train down to the dordogne b and i had eaten in a small paris bistro the crème brûlée we ate was scented our menu said with tonka the caramelized custard had a warm round flavour brown as leather when we asked what tonka is the chef emerged from the kitchen in a natty track suit and presented us with a dark hard wrinkled bean he left us the tactile little stone which b put in her pocket and brought back to our london kitchen it was an illicit trafficking the tonka seed is toxic in large doses and is banned in england most compelling for my purposes of helping my prunes masquerade as cherries whose stones masquerade as almond tonka is sometimes used in place of another forbidden flavour bitter almond favoured by suicides we risked our livers but tonka added the flavour of defection to my prunes and custard you have to transgress masquerade as what you might become and damage yourself a little or maybe even a lot in order to steal the lighted lamp syllabus far breton 3 large eggs 2 cups 475ml whole milk ½ cup 113g sugar ½ grated tonka bean or seeds from ½ a vanilla pod or ¼ tsp vanilla essence 1 8 tsp salt 1 tablespoon prune eau de vie or armagnac 5 tblsp 71g unsalted butter melted and cooled ¾ cup 94g flour 1 ½ cup 300g pitted prunes enough marzipan or brandied marzipan to stuff prunes about 150g if necessary 1 cup hot tea or ¼ cup armagnac plus ¼ cup water for soaking liquid icing confectioner s sugar for dusting put eggs milk sugar tonka vanilla salt and melted butter in a blender or food processor and whiz to blend for about 1 min sift in the flour and pulse the batter several times cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour preferably 3 overnight even better the batter should last several nights in a fridge if soaking your prunes put in heatproof bowl and pour over the hot tea or the armagnac and water mix that you ve warmed together cover and let stand centre a rack in the oven and preheat oven to 375f 190c butter an 8x2 inch round cake pan or deep quiche dish and dust the pan with flour tapping out the excess do not use a loose bottomed pan put pan on baking sheet drain prunes from their soaking liquid discarding the remaining liquid or better still drinking it if your prunes have pits slice them open with a small sharp knife and remove pit tear off enough marzipan to roll into a nugget that will fit inside the prune tuck the marzipan inside the prune closing the skin over it repeat until you have a plateful of stuffed prunes remove batter from fridge add the eau de vie or armagnac and whisk it lightly to reblend then rap the pitcher against the counter to break the top bubbles pour batter slowly and gently into the pan trying not to incorporate more air and then drop in the prunes distributing them evenly bake for 50 60 mins or until top of cake is puffed quite high has turned brown and a knife comes out clean if the pudding browns too quickly turn the oven down or even off and leave inside for the full cooking time transfer to cooling rack and cool to room temp you can now serve this straight from its dish or attempt to unmould it it will be fragile only unmould if you have baked it in the right depth of pan and if the bottom doesn t seem to have stuck have a serving plate at hand run a blunt knife around the edges to loosen dust the top of the pudding with confectioner s icing sugar then cover with a piece of parchment or wax paper place an upside down rack over the paper and invert the whole thing to turn the cake out onto the rack then quickly re invert onto the serving plate redust with confectioner s icing sugar if necessary posted by syllabub at 5 58 am 508 comments sunday january 04 2009 a is for apple a is for apple b is for burgle c is for chomp and d consequently is for do a runner i recently visited an english stately home and i acquired a small souvenir englishness and stateliness tend to make my fingers itch and so ever so rarely i am the agent of just a little misappropriation it was a long legged sort of sunday afternoon and b and i drifted into a plan to take the kind of walk that has a grand old house at the end of it poking around the houses of people richer than yourself is a pastime beloved by the english we are a persistently evaluative people and we have a peculiar attachment to being hushed to hushing others to peering at while being peered upon we pay good money to make sunday visits to the houses that most of us in another age would have spent our lives working in and around in another time serving the warp and weft of wealth upholstered the conviction that the steward can be as sovereign in his own way as the lord of the manor we tell lots of stories in which the butler or the valet not only waits on but quietly compensates for the failings of his boorish betters and these stories seed the english belief that service is the best way of knowing and thereby upholding refinement it was the draper who really understood quality cloth a housekeeper was more au fait than anyone with good china and the chambermaid most intimately knew the literal underpinnings of the better classes these workers were granted their own domains and they believed they had a kind of dustcloth ownership that lightly overlay the real tenacities of english property rights the cook of long standing born on the estate raised up through its servile ranks may have been said to rule the roost and be deferred to she even recreated the hierarchies of upstairs in her downstairs world now her descendants myself included enjoy a little snoop around the old architectures of a class system that haunts us with that particular combination of thrill and horror that constitutes all desires good and bad including hunger although few cooks or gardeners or maids serve estates these days the roots of that culture still entangle the soil and its hoary old stumps are putting up new shoots new shoots th...