Tenacious reporter’s plum torte recipe may outlast us all

By Pete Wells

For The New York Times

I’d been working at The New York Times about a day and a half when a reporter showed up at my desk with an urgent question. Her name was Marian Burros, and she wanted to talk about plum tortes.

I was brought on in 2006 to edit the food section, hired away from a men’s magazine, which is to say I had almost no relevant experience. I needed to bring myself up to speed on the paper, the writers, the budget and the possibilities. My plan was to have my deputy edit the section for a week or two while I learned the ropes and thought big thoughts about the future. In the meantime, I hoped not to make any day-to-day decisions.

My plan failed to take Marian into account.

A plum torte she had written about in 1983 went on to become one of the most requested recipes in the history of the Times, she explained. Reprinting the recipe was a fall tradition for years until some misguided editor put a stop to it. Marian suggested that I could right that old wrong by ushering the plum torte recipe into the paper again that year. I’d have to hurry, though. This was October, and the Italian prune plums that make the best tortes wouldn’t be in markets much longer.

I am ashamed to admit that I said no to Marian, who died Sept. 20 at age 92. It didn’t make sense to take up space in the paper when readers could find the recipe on our website, I reasoned.

What I didn’t know then was that veteran reporters like Marian are always playing the long game. Editors like me would come and go, but the plum torte would outlast all of us.

Two years later, in her annual guide to holiday gifts, she slipped in a mail-order source for “a delicious plum torte, the recipe for which has been in this paper many times.” In 2010, Amanda Hesser cited the recipe in The Times Magazine when writing about her “Essential New York Times Cookbook,” in which she called the torte “a nearly perfect recipe.”

Meanwhile, our online recipe archive was being rebuilt. As the site grew and grew, so did the plum torte’s fan club. The editors took notice, and in 2016 Margaux Laskey wrote about the torte’s second life as an internet phenomenon.

“I love that something so simple took off,” said Burros, then in retirement. I am sure she was especially pleased that the article resulted in the recipe’s return to print for the first time in more than a decade.

In the years since, the Times has mentioned and linked to the recipe dozens of times. But for Marian, nothing beat the validation provided by ink and newsprint. “I like seeing my name in the paper,” she told me once, when she thought it had been too long since I’d published one of her articles.

I suspect she never gave up hope that one fall, her plum torte recipe would roll through the printing presses one more time. If so, she was right.

The Original Plum Torte

The New York Times published Marian Burros’ recipe for Plum Torte every September from 1983 until 1989, when the editors determined that enough was enough. The recipe was to be printed for the last time that year. “To counter anticipated protests,” Burros wrote a few years later, “the recipe was printed in larger type than usual with a broken-line border around it to encourage clipping.” It didn’t help. The paper was flooded with angry letters. “The appearance of the recipe, like the torte itself, is bittersweet,” wrote a reader in Tarrytown, N.Y. “Summer is leaving, fall is coming. That’s what your annual recipe is all about. Don’t be grumpy about it.” We are not! And we pledge that every year, as summer gives way to fall, we will make sure that the recipe is easily available to one and all. The original 1983 recipe called for 1 cup sugar; the 1989 version reduced that to 3/4 cup. We give both options below. Here are five ways to adapt the torte.

Makes 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup to 1 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 cup unbleached flour, sifted

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt, optional

2 eggs

12 Italian prune plums, halved

Sugar and lemon juice, for topping

1 teaspoon cinnamon, or to taste

DIRECTIONS

1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2: Cream the sugar and butter in a bowl. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and beat well.

3: Spoon the batter into an 8-, 9- or 10-inch springform pan.

4: Split and pit the plums and place the halves, skin side up, on top of the batter.

5: Sprinkle lightly with sugar and lemon juice, depending on the sweetness of the fruit. Sprinkle with about a teaspoon of cinnamon, to taste.

6: Bake about an hour. Remove and cool; refrigerate or freeze if desired. Or cool to lukewarm, then serve plain or with whipped cream.

Tip: To freeze, double wrap torte in aluminum foil, place in plastic bag and seal. To serve a torte that has been frozen, defrost and reheat briefly at 300 degrees.

Recipe by Marian Burros.