Make a rich pie-dough; then line a pie-dish with the dough. Pare and remove the stones from the peaches and cut into quarters. Lay closely on the pie; sprinkle with brown sugar and moisten with wine. Bake in a moderate oven until done. Then spread with a meringue and let brown in the oven a few minutes.
The original assumes you already know how to build a fruit tart and gives no quantities at all, so the numbers below are the ones you have to supply yourself. The hinge is the wet fruit: peaches shed a great deal of juice, and if the shell is not set before they go in, the base will be soft.
- Quantities to supplyA 9-inch dish takes about 2 lb of peaches (6 to 8 medium), 1/3 to 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 2 to 3 tablespoons of wine. It serves eight.
- "Rich pie-dough"The original says no more than that. In a Viennese context it most likely points to a sweet short pastry closer to Mürbteig than to American flaky pie crust: flour, butter, a little sugar and egg yolk, worked briefly and chilled hard before rolling.
- Blind bake firstLine the dish, chill, then bake at 375F for 15 to 20 minutes with weights until the base is dry and pale gold. Peach juice plus wine will otherwise soak straight through.
- "A moderate oven"350F. Give it 40 to 50 minutes, until the peach quarters are tender at the tip of a knife and the juices are bubbling thickly rather than running.
- The wineThe recipe says only "wine". A sweet or off-dry white suits the fruit: Riesling, Muscat, or a dessert wine. Moisten the fruit; do not pool liquid in the shell. Red wine will discolour the peaches.
- Thicken if the fruit is very ripeThe recipe relies on evaporation alone. With juicy late-season peaches, toss the quarters with a tablespoon of cornstarch or fine semolina along with the sugar.
- The meringueThree egg whites to 6 tablespoons of superfine sugar, beaten to stiff glossy peaks. Spread it so it touches the pastry edge all round, which stops it shrinking, and brown at 350F for 8 to 10 minutes. "A few minutes" at a higher heat colours the peaks before the interior sets.
- ServingMeringue-topped fruit tarts weep on standing. Serve the day it is baked, at room temperature, and do not cover it tightly.
Vienna's pastry cooks were the reference point for sweet baking across the Habsburg lands and well beyond it, and a book of this kind — one dish a day, one nation at a time — could hardly reach January without stopping there. The word Torte in Austrian usage covers a far wider range than the layered chocolate constructions the name suggests in English: a single pastry base carrying fruit and a meringue lid is a perfectly ordinary Obsttorte, of a sort often said to be sold by weight in a Konditorei and eaten in the afternoon rather than after dinner. Splashing the fruit with wine before baking is an old central European habit, generally explained as a way of lifting underripe or out-of-season fruit.