Rachel Roddy’s recipe for prune, marsala and custard pudding | A kitchen in Rome

A cross between bread-and-butter pudding and zabaglione, this tasty pudding has a boozy edge

Often, tinned prunes are blamed, or the prunes and custard at school, or the cut-glass bowl full of them in a seaside hotel dining room with wallpaper that smelled of mince and Benson & Hedges. Yet there is no blame or trauma on my part: the tin of prunes in syrup my grandma always kept in the cupboard next to the peaches and pears; the bag of teddy bear noses (more on this later) on the shelf; or the bowls of soaked prunes, which looked like enormous sea slugs, on whatever sideboard: I liked them all. So black and thick, their sweetness concentrated and almost spicy.

Then there were what I thought of as “grown-up” prunes: the tin of stuffed prunes Dad bought Mum for Christmas every year. I now know they were prunes d’Agen, named after a town in Aquitaine in south-west France and stuffed with prune cream. But back then they were simply prunes stuffed with prunes: something I liked, stuffed with more of that thing – only 10 times darker and richer than the tins or the bags. Like a spray of a friend’s mum’s perfume or a swig from a bottle of advocaat, they were even better for being taken illicitly. Like other edible gifts, the tin of prunes used to be kept under the coffee table in the living room. To take one, I would lie on the rug, which meant there was a risk that the sticky prune would, like the toffee Quality Street, collect fluff (this was never a problem).

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