On Food and Cooking

and to browning reactions that generate
caramel and roasted notes as well as their
color, a brown-black deep enough to be
attractive rather than drab. This richness is the
reason that prunes work well in many savory
meat dishes. Prunes are such a concentrated
source of antioxidant phenolic compounds (up
to 150 mg per 100 gm) that they make an
excellent natural flavor stabilizer: they
prevent the development of warmed-over
flavor in ground meats when included at the
rate of just a few percent (1 tablespoon per
pound). They’re also rich in moisture-
retaining fiber and sorbitol and so are used to
replace fat in hamburgers and a variety of
baked foods. (Dried cherries have many
similar properties and uses.) Their well-
known laxative action on the human digestive
tract is not entirely understood but probably
involves the sugar alcohol sorbitol (p. 662),
which accounts for up to 15% of the weight of
both prune and juice. We can’t digest sorbitol,