Taste the Sunshine : California’s second gold rush was built on raisins and prunes. The dried fruit harvest: It’s hard to imagine the holidays without them.

If dried fruits hadn’t already been around, somebody in turn-of-the-century California would have invented them. Sweet! Sunny! Healthful! Of Unlimited Economic Potential! They seemed to sum up everything the most fevered boosters were claiming for the Golden State.

Forget for the moment that we’re talking about raisins and prunes. At the time, they were regarded as nothing less than gifts from a benevolent Nature. Dried fruits seemed to have been tailor-made for California’s sunny dry climate and fertile soil.

And its image. California’s dried fruits captured the imagination of turn-of-the-century America in much the same way the sunny, exuberant music of the Beach Boys did some 60 years later.

Just imagine: In California, even in the dead of winter, you could grab a little chunk of summer’s sweet bounty--grown, picked and prepared right here in this state. Ship some home to the Midwest to help the family survive February and, coincidentally, rub it in that you live in a place where such miracles as year-round fruit are commonplace.

A 1939 Santa Fe Railway booklet put it this way: “When the California sun, each summer, conceals within the acres of fruit spread beneath its bright rays, the fertility which earth and water have bestowed, there lies behind that varicolored panorama, numerous tasks delicately executed. Those things enable that sun to shine every day in homes throughout the world.”

From the farmer’s angle, the pitch was just as seductive. Picture some Minnesota wheat farmer working around the clock to get in a meager harvest before the rain. Why, in California, you could grow your fruit, pick it at the utmost ripeness and hold on to it until you felt like selling! And it took very little special equipment--most fruits were genuinely sun-dried.

In his 1909 book “California Fruits and How to Grow Them,” Edward James Wickson summed up the argument: “There are many parts of the earth where good fruit is grown: there are few where conditions producing such fruit continue to accomplish its preservation as they do in California.

“It is the function of the sunshine and dry air of California not only to bring vigorous growth to the tree and vine and carry the fruit of both to fullness of size, beauty and quality, but to continue its beneficent action until the state of preservation in which its beauty, flavors, aromas and nutritive qualities remain available to delight and nourish mankind until the following year’s sunshine wins from the earth another supply of fresh ripeness.”

Indeed, most indications seemed to bear that out. While dried fruits were for a long time regarded as exotics (before 1870, most of them had to be imported from the Mediterranean), between 1883 and 1886, production of California raisins, prunes and figs increased by almost 600%, from 2.8 million pounds to 17.3 million pounds. By 1890, raisin production alone accounted for 20 million pounds, and by 1892, prune production accounted for more than 22 million pounds. (Today, California averages roughly 750 million pounds of raisins and 340 million pounds of prunes.)

In an essay included in the report of the State Board of Horticulture’s 1890 meeting, one farmer wrote: “Never before in our State was there a better outlook in the markets for California dried fruits, nor brighter prospects for remunerative prices to the producer, than at present. In the face of discouragement, insect pests, low prices occasionally, and the howls of croakers, who always at such times cry, ‘I told you so; I told you that the fruit business in California would be overdone,’ it is indeed cheering and encouraging to see this interest steadily growing from year to year.”

Raisins were so important to Central California that they began showing up in place-names. Witness the town of Malaga, established in 1883 and named for a European raisin variety, and Raisin City, which in 1890 changed its name from Ormus, which several contemporary sources claimed meant “rattlesnake” (no way; the local Yokuts Indian word was probably either tood or watit ).

By 1897, “Imperial Fresno,” a promotional book published by the Fresno Republican newspaper, devoted an entire chapter to raisin growing, with economic breakdowns provided by various local vineyardists, concluding: “The man with means to do so who buys a raisin vineyard in Fresno County at the present prices of from $100 to $250 an acre for a bearing vineyard is surely putting his money where it will pay him good interest.”

“Raisins,” author and native son William Saroyan observed, “made Fresno famous.”

Prunes did the same for the Santa Clara Valley. First introduced to California in 1856, when Frenchman Pierre Pellier brought his brother Louis clippings of the d’Agen variety, they quickly established themselves in the fertile Santa Clara Valley.

A major step forward in the development of the prune industry came in the huge harvest of 1887, when the supply of plums so swamped the available mechanical evaporators that farmers began resorting to sun-drying--something that was not then done. It worked so well that it became the industry standard.

By 1892, the State Board of Horticulture could claim that Santa Clara County was “preeminently the horticultural county of the state and that prunes . . . were its principal crop.”

By 1900, there were 90,000 acres of prune orchards in the state, with 90% of the trees French prunes descended from Pellier’s original stock, though by that time, the name of the fruit had been changed.

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At the 1890 meeting of State Board of Horticulture, a grower, A. Block, argued: “We all look to the Frenchman for characteristic pride. If a Frenchman goes to buy meat, he wants to buy it of the French ‘ butchaire. ‘ When he buys his bread, he wants it from the French ‘ bakaire. ‘ I have some pride, and I hope that California will assert a pride of character and drop the name of the French prune. Let us call it the California prune.”

A member of the audience pointed out that the variety most commonly grown did come from France and that, what’s more, prune itself is a French word. That didn’t slow Block. “Prune is an American name, good enough for us. I want American names on all occasions. That is plain; that is the English of it. Let us drop all foreign words.” The motion carried.

The California date industry began in 1903, a little later than the rest. Drawn by the existence of a native date palm, various farmers, most prominently Bernard Johnson (called “the grandfather of the Date Industry”), began experimenting with different date varieties.

They were encouraged by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which saw date farming as a possible use for the otherwise desolate Coachella Valley. Between 1909 and 1913, the USDA is said to have distributed more than 3 million date seeds. Orchards were planted in the Imperial, Colorado and Coachella valleys and even in Altadena, where F.O. Popenoe was the president of West India Gardens, on Fair Oaks Boulevard.

“Dates are the coming profitable crop of California fruits,” advertised George Wharton James, a prominent Coachella Valley growers and historian, in 1912 in the back of a pamphlet on date culture that he had edited. “Somebody is going to make a lot of money during the next few years out of dates. WHY NOT SECURE YOUR SHARE?”

California dried fruits once again captured the public’s imagination in the 1920s, promoted by the likes of Battle Creek, Mich., health shaman J.H. Kellogg and his acolytes. In a 1921 telegram to the California Associated Raisin Co., he wrote: “Raisins are served on the Battle Creek Sanitarium table every day. A pound of raisins has twice the food value and equal amount of iron and seven times as much food lime as a pound of choicest lean steak. If the American people would eat more raisins and less meat the results would be better digestion, less rheumatism, less Bright’s disease, less heart disease, greater efficiency and longer life.”

In “The Science of Eating” from the same period, Alfred W. McCann is more graphic. “The skin of anemic women is white. The flesh of anemic women is flabby. The muscles of anemic women lack tone,” he wrote. “When iron is withdrawn from their blood the roses vanish from their cheeks. Cosmetics applied from the outside deceive neither God nor man.

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“Iron deficiency as a disease baffles the medical profession. There are no whoops of joy, no outbursts of buoyant energy, no cries of bounding gladness, no hops, skips or jumps, no fountains of eternal youth, vigor, life or health in the bottle of ‘beef, iron and wine,’ or the jar of rouge.

“The raisin is a gift of God. If we could increase the consumption of raisins a hundred fold, much of the anema (sic) due to our denatured foods would disappear.”

In other words, he wished they all could be California girls.

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This recipe, from Jacqueline Higuera McMahan’s “California Rancho Cooking” (Olive Press: 1983), makes a moist, crumbly cake with a rich, spicy flavor.

GRANDMA’S PRUNE CAKE

2 cups prunes, plumped in hot water 10 minutes, water reserved 1/2 cup butter, room temperature 1 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed 2 eggs 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice 1/2 cup buttermilk 1 teaspoon grated orange zest 1 cup chopped nuts 1 cup raisins plumped in 2 tablespoons warm Sherry Sugar Glaze

Chop prunes.

Cream butter and granulated and brown sugars in bowl until fluffy. Add eggs 1 at time, beating well after each addition.

In separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice. Set aside.

Add chopped prunes, 2 tablespoons reserved prune juice and buttermilk to creamed butter. Stir in flour mixture, orange zest, nuts and raisins. Pour into well-greased 12-cup bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees 35 minutes or until wood pick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool, remove cake from pan and top with Sugar Glaze. Makes 10 servings.

Each serving contains about:

550 calories; 298 mg sodium; 88 mg cholesterol; 25 grams fat; 79 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 0.84 gram fiber.

Sugar Glaze

1/4 cup butter, softened 3/4 to 1 cup powdered sugar 1/4 cup whipping cream, heated 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Blend together butter and 3/4 cup powdered sugar until smooth. Whisk in warm cream and vanilla. If mixture is too thick, add more cream to thin. If mixture is too thin, add more sugar to thicken.

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This recipe comes from an undated pamphlet titled “California Dried Fig Recipes.” The cookies could also be filled with chopped dates or, if you get right down to it, any other dried fruit cooked into a stiff compote.

FIG-FILLED COOKIES

1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 3 eggs, beaten 4 cups sifted all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 teaspoons baking powder Fig Filling 1 egg white 1 teaspoon honey

Cream butter and sugar in bowl. Add eggs and beat until well blended. In separate bowl, sift flour together with cinnamon, salt and baking powder. Then mix thoroughly with creamed mixture. Knead quickly until dough is smooth. Chill dough.

Divide dough into 4 pieces and roll each piece out very thin, adding flour as necessary. Cut into 3-inch rounds. From half of rounds, cut small circle in center. Lay whole rounds on greased baking sheet. Place 1 tablespoon Fig Filling on centers. Cover with top rounds and press edges together. Beat egg white (save egg yolk for another use) and honey to combine in small bowl.

Brush tops with egg white mixture. Bake at 350 degrees 10 minutes. Makes 4 dozen cookies.

Each cookie contains about:

98 calories; 89 mg sodium; 18 mg cholesterol; 2 grams fat; 18 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein; 0.33 gram fiber.

Fig Filling

1 1/2 cups dried figs 1/4 cup orange juice 2 teaspoons grated orange zest 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt

Rinse figs, drain and chop. Combine in saucepan with orange juice, orange zest, water, sugar and salt. Bring to boil and continue boiling until very thick. Remove from heat and cool.

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When someone says “raisin cookie,” what most of us think about is an oatmeal cookie with raisins. This isn’t it. From an early 1920s recipe pamphlet published by the Sun-Maid Raisin cooperative, it bears the distinctive stamp of the Battle Creek health food movement. In fact, it resembles a graham cracker more than anything else, though it is a little moister and sweeter because of the raisins.

THE ORIGINAL RAISIN COOKIE

1/2 cup shortening 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs 1/4 cup milk 2 cups raisins 4 cups flour 4 tablespoons baking powder

Cream shortening and sugar together in bowl until fluffy. Add salt and eggs and stir until smooth. Add milk slowly, stirring.

Grind raisins in food processor or blender and add to mixture. Sift 2 cups flour and baking powder together in separate bowl. Then add to mixture. Add remaining 2 cups flour.

On lightly floured surface, roll dough out about 1/8-inch thick and cut into rectangles with sharp knife. Bake at 350 degrees 7 to 8 minutes. Makes 4 1/2 dozen cookies.

Each cookie contains about:

84 calories; 142 mg sodium; 8 mg cholesterol; 2 grams fat; 15 grams carbohydrates; 1 grams protein; 0.10 gram fiber.

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This would make a great side dish for the holidays, replacing cranberries (if you dare contemplate such a coup). It comes from a recipe pamphlet titled “100 Selected Dried Fruit Recipes,” allegedly chosen by 100,000 homemakers at the 1939-1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.

CALIFORNIA CONSERVE

4 cups prunes 2 oranges 1 lemon 1 cup raisins 5 cups water 1 cup honey 2 cups sugar 1/2 cup light corn syrup 1/4 teaspoon salt 3 (4-inch) sticks cinnamon 1 cup chopped walnuts 3/4 cup chopped almonds

In bowl cover prunes with boiling water 5 minutes. Drain and cut from pits in small pieces. Cut 1 unpleed orange into thin slices, then into small pieces. Peel remaining orange and cut pulp into small pieces. Slice unpeeled lemon in thin slices, then into small pieces.

In saucepan combine prunes, orange pieces, lemon pieces, raisins, water, honey, sugar, corn syrup, salt and cinnamon sticks. Boil until thick, stirring frequently to prevent scorching. Add chopped walnuts and almonds last 5 minutes cooking. Remove cinnamon sticks before serving. Makes about 4 pints.

Each 1/2-cup serving contains about:

376 calories; 48 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 8 grams fat; 80 grams carbohydrates; 0 protein; 1.36 grams fiber.

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Another recipe from an old advertising pamphlet, this one was published by the Dromedary company, an early packager of dates. These are chewy little macaroons, shot full of sweet bits of date.

DATE MACAROONS

4 egg whites 1 cup sugar 1 pound blanched almonds, chopped finely 1 (8-ounce) package dates, chopped fine Butter

In bowl beat egg whites (save egg yolks for another use) until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, beating, until stiff peaks form. Fold almonds and dates into egg whites.

Drop by rounded tablespoon onto buttered baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees 10 minutes. Makes 3 dozen cookies.

Each cookie contains about:

118 calories; 7 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 12 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams protein; 0.53 gram fiber.

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First, this chicken and stuffing are absolutely delicious. That said, it must be admitted that the original title of the recipe, from a 1967 California Raisin Board pamphlet, was “Stabbedium et Stuffedium Slicko Chicko.” It must have been something in the water.

CHICKEN WITH RAISIN STUFFING

1/4 cup butter 1/2 cup pine nuts 1 chicken liver, finely chopped 1 cup raisins 1 cup rice Grated zest of 1 lemon Juice of 1 lemon 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 cup chopped mint leaves 2 cups chicken stock 1 (4-pound) chicken

Heat butter in large saucepan and brown pine nuts and chicken liver. Combine with raisins, rice, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt, mint and chicken stock. Cover tightly and heat to boiling. Lower heat and simmer until stock is absorbed, about 20 minutes. Let stand at room temperature about 1/2 hour.

Loosely pack stuffing into chicken and skewer opening shut. Bake rest of stuffing separately in buttered casserole dish at 325 degrees. Roast chicken in roasting pan or on rack at 425 degrees 10 to 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake about 1 hour 15 minutes. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

1,025 calories; 1,271 mg sodium; 240 mg cholesterol; 58 grams fat; 74 grams carbohydrates; 57 grams protein; 0.83 gram fiber.