Pear Sauce with Prunes

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I have been making apple and pear sauces for years. Both fruits are cheap and easy to works with since no peeling is involved. Fruit sauces can be eaten straight from the jar, served on buttered bread, but they are also excellent as tarts and cookies fillings and as I have recently learnt, also as an egg substitute (click here to see a delicious Eggless Applesauce Cake recipe). I don’t remember how I had this idea, but probably one day I got bored with the pear sauce I had been making for years, saw a jar of prunes whiles reaching for the sugar and decided to experiment. The result was so satisfactory, I simply stopped making other pear sauce versions and prunes have become the obligatory ingredient of my pear sauces.

Even though both prunes and pears have strong flavours, neither of them gets lost in this combination. The sweetness of the pear is completed by a slight tanginess of the prune creating a harmonious final taste. With their fiber, vitamins and other health benefits prunes add a healthy accent to this sweet treat.

Before I pass to the recipe details, I would like to thank Stefanie from A Dash of Sugar and Spice, Shannon from Just as Delish and Charles from 5 Euro Food for the Versatile Blogger Award I have recently got from all of them. I feel honoured to get this triple (!) award.

The Award has two rules. The first one is to say 7 random things about oneself that others might not know and the second one is to pass the award to 7 other bloggers. I found it very hard to think of the things which might be interesting and hope the following random facts don’t make you yawn:

1. I used to be a vegetarian for a year when I was 16 or 17. The smell of my mum’s roast chicken made me quit.

2. I used to be a huge Depeche Mode fan as a teenager and still love listening to their old songs sometimes. Their concert last year was one of the most moving moments of the past several years of my life. Of course this one is among my favourites (althought this is not my concert):

UPDATE: Apparently (thank you, Nami!) the above video doesn’t work in the US, so I hope the below non-live version can be viewed worldwide:

3. I have recently started to love harpsichord (which used to irritate me) and the late Scott Ross’s interpretations not only give me goose pimples, but some bring tears to my eyes.

4. The only book I have read at least ten times (and which still makes me laugh) is The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend.

5. At the age of 13 I knitted four wool  jumpers and actually wore them. Two of them were quite complicated (one had a very kitsch Mexican desert landscape with cactuses and sunset…). I still don’t know how I did them or how I dared wearing them.

6. I am a Hungarian folk music fan. It makes me happy and sad at the same time.

7. I am not ashamed to say I love South Park. Eric Cartman rocks! Click here to see one of my favourite Eric scenes.

Ideally I would love to be able to pass the Versatile Blogger award to all the authors whose wonderful blogs I follow and who are my teachers and my constant inspiration. Some of my blogging friends have already been nominated, which is a good thing, because even without them, I find it difficult to put only 7 names. Anyway, here is the list of seven (oops,eight) out of many bloggers I admire and find exceptional (I am sorry if some of you have already been nominated):

Arudhi from A box of Kitchen

Jeno from Weeknite Meals

Kelly from Inspired Edibles

Miss Iona Lion from Twice Bitten

Mr. Three-Cookies from Three Cookies

Ray from Wok with Ray

Shilpa from Baking Devils

Shu Han from Mummy, I can cook!

Now back to the recipe.

Preparation: about 2 hours

Ingredients:

2 kg pears

100 g prunes (without stones)

500g-1 kg sugar (depends on the pears’ sweetness and your own preferences)

juice from 1 big lemon

Wash the pears, chop them roughly into four-five pieces and put them in a big shallow pan.

Pour a litre of water, cover the pan and cook at medium heat until the fruit is well cooked and almost falls into pieces.

In the meantime mix the prunes in a food processor or chop them very finely.

Pass the cooked pears through a food mill, transfer into a big pan.

Add the lemon juice, the sugar, the prunes and cook, stirring around 15 minutes or until the sugar is dissolved and the sauce starts boiling.

Taste if the sauce is sweet enough, add more sugar if needed, cook for 30 more minutes, stirring from time to time.

/At this point you can either freeze it (after the sauce has cooled down) or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the sauce, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars in a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling – water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the sauce and don’t forget to mark the date.

NOTE: For the readers who live in the USA, the USDA-approved canning method is different. You can find it described here:
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html.

Published by Sissi

60 Replies to “Pear Sauce with Prunes”

  1. Haha, cool to hear you like South Park – it’s so inappropriately hilarious 😀 I tried vegetarianism too for a while. Bacon broke me in the end. That damn bacon… that and pheasant (God that stuff is good). I’d never heard Hungarian folk-music before – it sounded almost Irish in some parts!

    Love the addition of prunes to the sauce. How long will it keep once canned?

    1. Thank you, Charles! The sauce keeps for years, like jams etc.. Of course it has to be well sealed and I always advice the hot water bath (although many home cooks just content themselves with sealing the jars and making sure they are filled with very hot preserves).
      I am happy you like South Park too! I love their lack of political correctness. Pheasant??? I think I had pheasant twice in my life only, but it would certainly make me stop vegetarianism too. Hungarian folk music is the only folk music I like (I am not a big fan of the Irish one…).

      1. We were lucky growing up – my grandfather was a game-keeper on a large country estate in England. In the summer (or whenever it was the shooting season started) he used to give us a brace of pheasants every now and again so we could eat it at least, usually, ~4 times a year. I liked to mock my friends at school and ask them if they enjoyed their “poor man’s pheasant on the weekend (chicken)” while I’d been living it up with my fresh game birds! 😀

        1. Charles, you were really lucky! I had my first pheasant about 7 years ago… And your pheasants were real game (now they are often reared, free range, but still reared… the meat must taste completely different and frankly since I had pheasants in restaurants only I cannot be sure if I had the wild ones).

  2. Oh Sissi, thank you so much for the award! I have to be honest and say I am VERY SLOW when it comes to posting award entries, honestly can’t think of anything that interesting about myself to share, so I’ve been dragging my feet with a couple other awards, hope you won’t be dissapointed not seeing one posted soon, I promise I will have an entry with combined awards up some time in the future, I am definitely thinking about what to write!

    Depeche Mode!!! Oh how I loved that band! Though the song I found the most interesting was not sang by the main singer, it was the blonde guy singing by himself that really haunted me, too bad I can’t remember the song title or the melody anymore…

    2. Jeno, it took me ages to write the seven facts, so I totally understand if you don’t play the game 🙂
      I am happy you also used to be a Depeche Mode fan!

  4. Interesting recipe, and interesting facts. Vegetarian for one year, amazing. Depeche Mode sounds good, I have never heard of them before. And Hungarian folk music was certainly interesting to listen to, quite lively.

    Thanks for the award, I will get onto it tomorrow. BTW apple butter is a substitute for regular butter as well (I have tried this once myself).

    1. Thank you, Mr. Three-Cookies. I have never used apple butter as a real butter substitute. Although the French serve black pudding with cooked apples… so it could go well even with savoury sandwiches or black pudding toasts… Thanks for the idea!

  6. LOL!!! Oh Gosh! You guys crack me up!
    Sorry Sissi, couldn’t help reading the funny exchange, or rather, change of name for Charles. 😀
    Prunes and pears sounds like a great combination altho I’m not a big fan of prunes. Mixed with some other fruits, I’m guessing it compliments it perfectly … like in this case.

    1. Thank you so much, Ping! I love prunes, probably because of their tanginess.
      I have a feeling that Sissi isn’t really a pseudo Charles would choose if he wanted to take one 😉

  7. What a gorgeous sauce! I love the combination of pears and prunes! I’ve used the obvious raisins, but had not thought of prunes and I do love their sweet taste! Congrats on your well deserved award and so fun to learn a bit more about you!!

    1. Thank you so much, Linda. I also like raisins, but I think I needed a bit of prunes’ tanginess here (raisins lack it).

  8. In fairness the skin is the best part! Great list, congrats on the award again. You picked some great blogs to pass it onto too. Great recipe to boot!

    1. Thank you, Greg! I am not always sure about the skin in every fruit’s case, but I’m too lazy to check how it would taste if I peeled the pears before 🙂

  9. Sissi, love the combination of pear and prunes…would love to spread over a toast.
    Hope you have a great week and enjoyed reading about you 🙂

  10. Sissi, Congrats on your award! I’m a big Depeche Mode fan…lol…so let me join the fan club here. Which song you liked? We can’t watch the clip because it says “the uploader has not made this video available to your country”… It reminds me of my first year in the US… I listen to It’s No Good from radio a lot!! Very nostalgic. My fun days. 🙂 Almost forgot to mention about food hey who started talking about Depeche Mode?! heehee). Another great sauce recipe Sissi! I keep thinking if you will have another next sauce/preserve recipe, but it seems like you have a great collection. 😉 Going back to “Depeche Mode” mode… 🙂

    1. Thank you so much, Nami! If you knew how many preserves I make and don’t post… (I’m a crazy preserver).
      What a pleasure to see you are a Depeche Mode fan too! I’m so sorry about the message, I had no idea youtube blocked some clips from the US.
      Maybe this link will work? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY&ob=av2e It’s not live, but I hope it will works. I will also put it in my post, thank you for letting me know! I prefer their older songs, the only recent one I like is Wrong.

    2. Oh, I have just checked “It’s no good”. I also like it! (I’m not good with titles sometimes).

    1. Hahahaha! Guess what is written when click on your link? This video is not available in your country! (And what about the 2nd link I added to my post, just below the first one? I am very curious if this one can be opened in the US…).
      Otherwise, if there is a concert, you must go! They are incredible in concert. Not every group is. And the people who come to concerts are a bit like us… They are very nostalgic, know the songs by heart, the atmosphere is great.

  14. I love these fruits as they are so healthy and delicious. Congrats on the awards! We was just going to attempt it before getting involved in the jelly competition. Thanks for visiting, we have been pretty busy to say the least and it’s only the first four days…

    1. Thank you! I am amazed by your beautiful, complicated creations and your imagination! I will be coming back throughout the month with big pleasure.

  15. Congratulations on your multiple nominations Sissi and thank you so much for nominating me! It’s so nice to be thought of 🙂 Depeche Mode… wow, blast from the past. I think I bought the album with ‘People are People’ for my brother… I’ve never watched South Park but now you’ve got me curious! I think prunes are a great addition – I suspect they work beautifully in the pear sauce (I sometimes find them tough and not my favourite texture on their own) and I’m all for the magic fibre bullet in the morning – ha-ha! Thanks again Sissi!!

    1. Thank you, Kelly. Oh, “People are People”… it makes me so nostalgic! If you don’t know South Park you might be shocked. I always mix the prunes for this pear suace, so there are no tough bits.

  16. Congrats on all of the awards, Sissi, that’s great! This pear sauce looks delicious. And I’m not ashamed to say that I’m a South Park fan too. It’s tough not to be though when growing up with a brother who is literally obsessed with the show. Almost any time he quotes something, it’s from South Park, ha!

    1. Thanks, Caroline. I’m happy you are another South Park fan! (I also quote often Eric Cartman…).

  17. Hahaha, I imagine the smell of roast chicken will be very tempting for all vegetarians!

    Your pear/prune sauce sounds absolutely lovely. I would never have thought prune and pear will go together so well! I would love that on french toast. 🙂

    1. Thank you, Angie. I’m sorry. Nami has already told me: apparently they don’t work in certain countries, but I thought only in the US… I haven’t found any videos working all around the world. It’s the first time something like this happens.

    1. Thank you, Jessica! It was very difficult to choose something “random” about me. I was scared I would bore everyone to death 😉
      This sauce is not more difficult than a normal pear sauce, but it’s a nice change.

  25. Way too cute Sissi! Congratulations for receiving the award. I was thinking the other day how young you are or how you look. Ha, my interest is really peaked now. I cannot banish those knitted things you describe from my mind. 🙂

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