This will explain to you why in Canada all kinds of root crops and apples must be so carefully guarded from frost; and when the country was less settled, and even to-day in the less inhabited parts, the apples are still dried in a primitive manner. They are peeled generally by a small machine, then quartered and cored, and strung on long threads by means of a coarse needle. Then they are dried, either near the stove or else in the sun; but this last is not often possible, because of the lateness of the season. The apples thus dried are very good, but if cooked carelessly are apt to be rather tough.
In Italy figs are dried in the sun by the peasantry. Each fig is cut open, but not divided, and carefully dried. Then, when dried, they are closed together so as to look like whole figs again, and strung one by one on the long flexible mulberry twigs. They are very good and are less sweet than the dried fig of commerce, as no sugar is added to them in drying.
Last year I saw quantities of figs dried by the peasantry in this manner for sale in Switzerland, where they appeared to be quite a novelty. I could not find out where they came from; but I daresay from the Italian canton of Ticino, or, as the French call it, Tessin. This is, of course, warmer than its sister cantons on the northern side of the Alps. I have not seen these yet in England, but there have been some Californian dried figs that were very good for eating, and perhaps we shall see more of them in the future, as the market for them grows more assured.
Dried figs are said by the scientists to contain nerve and muscle food, heat and waste, but to be bad for the liver. The same is said of dried prunes, but they afford the best and highest kind of nerve or brain food. They also supply heat and waste; but they are not muscle feeding.
All stone fruits are said to be injurious for people who suffer from the liver and should be used rather cautiously.
Apples are thought a most valuable food in every way but one—they do not afford staying properties, but they supply the highest nerve and muscle food.
If you be fond of almonds, you may like to know that they afford no heat, but give the highest brain, nerve, and muscle food. I hope this applies to the salted almonds which are so popular.
The process of drying is called “desiccation” or, usually in America, “evaporated.” The original desiccator is an apparatus much used in chemistry and physics and the word comes from the Latin desicco, “I dry up”—meaning that the water is evaporated out of the fruit or any substance to be dried. This idea was carried out into the drying up of the water and fruit juices for commercial purposes. An oven with trays in it to hold the fruit is one of the forms of using heat, and in Lower California the heat of the sun is utilised for the drying of prunes. Some time ago there were notices of the commencement of this industry and the importation of work-people from the neighbourhood of Tours.
The ordinary prunes sold in the shops are the fruit of the St. Julian plum, a common species which is grown everywhere in France for the purpose. The best French or dessert plums come from Provence, and the Californian plums must be of the same variety as the Brignole plum. The latest competitor in the English market is Bosnia, and those which I have tried were quite as good as the French plums. Under Austrian rule, Bosnia has developed wonderfully, and the climate is a delightful one, well suited to fruit growing.
The best of all the French dried prunes come from Provence, the land of poetry and romance. They are made of the kinds of prunes called the Perdrigon blanc, and Violette, and Prune d’Ast. The two former come under one category and are called Pruneaux de Brignole, from the place where they are prepared, the small town of Brignole, in Provence, a name I am sure you will have often seen on the boxes of prunes used for dessert. The common kinds of prunes are gathered by merely shaking the trees; but those for preparing as French plums must be gathered in the morning, before the sun is up, by taking hold of the stalk without touching the fruit and laying each plum very gently on vine leaves in baskets. The latter must be filled without the plums being allowed to touch each other, and then they are carried to the fruit-room and exposed to the sun and air for three or four days, after which they become quite soft. The next process is to put them on trays into a spent oven and shut up quite closely for twenty-four hours. Then they are taken out, the oven is re-heated, and made rather warmer, and the plums are put in again for the same time; then they are taken out, carefully turned over, and the oven is heated to one-fourth hotter than it was before, and the plums are returned to it again for the third time, and after remaining the twenty-four hours, are taken out and left exposed till they become quite cold. Then comes the most curious part of the process, which, when once explained to me, was a solution of an enigma over which I had much wondered, namely, why the stones of the good French plums are loose and unattached, while those of the common prune are so much more fixed in the fleshy substance of the fruit. This part of the process is called “rounding,” and is performed by turning the stones in the plums without breaking the skins, and the two ends are then pressed between the thumb and finger to flatten the fruit. Then they are once more laid on the sieves for drying and placed in a rather hot oven for one hour, the oven being closely shut. Lastly, they are put again into a cool oven, left for twenty-four hours, when the process is ended, and they are packed in bottles or boxes for sale and exportation. Now I have given this long account, taken from a recent authority, because I know my readers of the “G. O. P.” are world-spread, and because this is the kind of process adopted with any kind of dried fruit; and an ordinary brick oven for bread-baking can be perfectly well used for doing it. All varieties of the plum can, I am told, be dried in this manner, some, of course, with better success than others.