The Practical Prune

This vitamin-rich dried fruit is much more than just a way to keep things moving.

Prunes are dried plums. The dark-purplish fruit—sweet, chewy, squishy and stickytextured—is usually made from Prunus domestica. That’s the European plum, the fruit of a flowering deciduous tree that grows not only in Europe, but also in the Americas (especially California), the Middle East and the Far East. No beauty, the prune is widely hailed simply for one purpose: helping to keep us regular. But such typecasting does the wrinkly little thing an injustice, selling short its culinary versatility and its manifold nutritious boons.

While all prunes start out as plums, not all plums are candidates for prunehood. Generally, plums sold to be eaten as plums are “clingstone” fruits, with hard-to-remove pits, while plums with a pruny destiny are “freestone”—the pit can be taken out easily. In 2001 some prune marketers won permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to call what they were selling “dried plums” instead of prunes to avoid what they thought were negative connotations of the latter label. Fortunately, many of these prune prudes have since recovered their prune pride.

POWER UP:

When it comes to assisting your body’s blood clotting and bone building, vitamin K is a powerhouse. And guess what food is a veritable K-mart! A 100-gram (3.5-ounce) serving of uncooked prunes meets 57 percent of your daily need for K—as well as 16 percent each of your riboflavin, alias vitamin B2 (which can help the body absorb nutrients and prevent damage to cells caused by free radicals), B6 (good for the brain, nerves and immune system) and potassium (an aid to maintaining normal fluid levels in cells). At 115 calories for a serving of five prunes, this fruit can be a healthy snack alternative.

And what about prunes’ claim to fame? Five London researchers, not content simply to ask their grandmothers, reviewed previous trials to assess the fruit’s vaunted prowess as a laxative. Results published in 2014 in Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics charted groups of participants, with and without a constipation complaint, as they ate 100 grams of prunes a day for three weeks. “Number twos” became more frequent for the constipated group and easier for both groups. The reasons? Probably both prunes’ high fiber content and their generous quantity of sorbitol, which can help stimulate the gastrocolic reflex, a signal to the colon to go into action.

Prunes do have potential downsides. Eating too many can trigger gas and/or diarrhea. Also, the Mayo Clinic warns that if you’re taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) for depression, eating foods like prunes that are high in the amino acid tyramine can result in excessive tyramine levels in the body—and a possible blood-pressure spike.

BUY/STORE/SERVE

Almost every grocery store and many fruit markets sell prunes; you’ll find them among other dried fruits, often in jars or plastic packages. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says dried fruits such as prunes can retain their quality stored in a pantry for up to six months. “After opening,” it adds, “you may wish to store them tightly sealed in the refrigerator to preserve the quality for up to six additional months or freeze them for one month.”

You can pop a prune into your mouth and be happy about it—it’s a healthy snack with natural sweetness. Or use prunes in a salad, a wholegrain muffin or a bowl of cereal. Mix them with spiced red cabbage or a quinoa stew. As an hors d’oeuvre, try prunes stuffed with chicken-liver mousse. Search out online recipes for main courses such as braised pork with prunes or roast pheasant with leeks and prunes. Go international with Belgian rabbit in prune sauce or prune-filled Middle Eastern pilaf. Or make a memorable dessert using prunes in a chocolate cake, or fashioning a prune-and-almond scone or a prune-andchocolate-torte.

Finally, of course, there’s prune juice. Try it in the morning when you need to help things along— or when you simply want a distinctive-tasting breakfast-beverage change-up pitch.

—Timothy Kelley