Make a rich pie-crust and let bake until done. Peel and chop some peaches and mix with sugar to taste. Fill the pie with the peaches; let bake. Whip 1 cup of rich cream with pulverized sugar and flavor with vanilla. Spread the cream high over the pie; let get cold and serve.
September 21 — No. 21
English
A terse late-Victorian formula that assumes you already know how to make and blind-bake a pastry shell. The one thing worth pinning down before you start is the double baking: the crust goes into the oven empty, then again briefly with the fruit, and the cream never sees heat at all.
- The two bakesThe recipe gives no temperatures or times, so these are modern figures: blind-bake the shell fully, lined and weighted, at 400F for about 15 minutes, weights out, another 10-12 minutes until dry and coloured. The second bake with the peaches is short, 15-20 minutes at 375F, just enough to soften the fruit and set its juice. Baking the shell first is what keeps it from going soggy under wet fruit.
- No quantities givenA 9-inch shell takes roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb of peaches, peeled and chopped, with 1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar depending on ripeness. "Rich pie-crust" in period usage meant a generous proportion of fat -- butter or lard -- to flour; a standard all-butter shortcrust is a fair modern stand-in.
- Pulverized sugarThis is powdered or confectioners' sugar in modern terms. Period pulverized sugar was generally just finely ground sugar, without the cornstarch modern confectioners' sugar carries; the starch is harmless here and may in fact help stabilise the whipped cream. Two tablespoons per cup of cream is about right.
- Rich creamUse heavy or whipping cream, 36% fat or higher. "Rich cream" here may well have been richer than today's standard heavy cream, so do not substitute half-and-half -- it will not hold a peak, and the topping is meant to stand high.
- Thickening the fruitThe original relies on the peaches alone. Modern peaches can be juicy enough that a tablespoon of cornstarch or two of flour tossed with the fruit and sugar will keep the filling from flooding the shell.
- PeelingScore an X in the base, thirty seconds in boiling water, then into ice water; the skins slip off. Freestone varieties chop far more easily than clingstone.
- Assembly and servingThe pie must be completely cold before the cream goes on, or it will slacken and slide. Whip and spread within an hour or two of serving and keep it refrigerated. A 9-inch pie serves six to eight.
Peaches are generally at their best in late summer and early autumn in the northern states, and a book arranged as a dish a day naturally puts them here. The "English" label is doing loose work: what seems to distinguish this from an American peach pie is the absence of a top crust and the crown of sweetened whipped cream, arguably closer in spirit to an English open fruit tart finished with cream than to the double-crust pies commonly associated with American kitchens of the period. Books of this type — or tagged with a nationality — appear to have been something of a publishing fashion around the turn of the twentieth century, aimed at the middle-class housekeeper who wanted variety without a new cookbook every week. The nationalities were often more decorative than documentary, and are best read as a promise of novelty rather than a claim of provenance.