If a prune is a dehydrated plum, why is there prune juice? Dehydration is all about sucking the liquid out of something, right? So how can the poor prune offer any juice to make prune juice, once it has been rendered a prune?
Must there be millions of prunes to make a single bottle of juice?
Is prune juice really plum juice? Wouldn’t that be a more attractive name?
… why is there no raisin juice?
To the best of my recall, prunes are “juicier” than raisins, probably just because they are several times larger. I think it would be pretty easy to get juice from them. Do people still torture small children and make them drink prune juice to ensure they have “their daily BM”? Maybe my great-grandmother was just mean, but there’s no way I’d ever drink that stuff again, it’s so oily and nasty. The fruits themselves don’t taste much better!
[hijack]Point of order…It has been declared there are no more prunes. There is only dried plums and dried plum juice…[/hijack]
Thank you.
My WAG was right! According to http://www.stapleton-spence.com/CustomerService/pjmfgr.htm, the prunes are cooked down to extract the juice. I suppose it’s the drying that changes the flavour, just like sun-dried tomatoes.
Here’s a link, Keppele:
http://www.sneakykitchen.com/forum/prune_juice_production.htm
I guess it’s made, but not very common in North America.
Have you seen this Reeder?
http://shinbone.home.att.net/plum.htm
I guess you won’t see dried plum juice called that!
I think I’ll go buy a lb. of prunes and a dozen Chinese gooseberries.
Confucius [didn’t really] say:
“He who chews on many prunes shall sit on pot for many moons.”
Actually, prunes are not dried plums. Prunes are their own variety of fruit, separate but closely related to the plum. For some reason, they juice and dry better than plums, so they are used where the plum isn’t.
I guess it’s sort of like how certain varieties of cherry or apple are used for cooking or juice, while other varieties are meant to be eaten in their natural state.
All this information comes from my mother, who was a professional fruit picker in her youth, and who grew a prune tree in our front yard. Prunes is good eatin’, by the way.
Hey, they do make raisin juice!
Here’s some raisin juice concentrate for you. “Packaged in clean 55 gallon drums - 630 pounds each drum”
http://www.sunpacificprod.com/raisin.html
Well, I wasn’t sure I wanted 630 pounds of raisin juice, but since it’s in a CLEAN drum…
OK, that’s acutally used as an ingredient in baked goods. Here’s someone selling raisin juice to drink. So it does exist.
They’re still a variety of plum, **Saltire/b]. The ones used for prunes are called prune plums till they’re dried and called prunes. Of course, now they’re called dried (prune)plums.