Peach Duff
1 quart thinly sliced peaches. 2 cups flour. 2 cups sugar. 1 tablespoon Cottolene. 4 teaspoons baking powder. 1 teaspoon salt. 3/4 cup milk.
PROCESS: Mix and sift flour, baking powder and salt; rub in Cottolene with tips of fingers, add milk gradually, mixing ingredients with a knife. Turn on a slightly floured board, knead slightly, pat and roll to fit top of pudding dish. Butter bottom and sides of dish, put in peaches and sugar in layers. Cover with dough; press edges over edge of dish and steam one hour. Serve in dish in which it was steamed. Serve with
A steamed cobbler under a baking-powder crust, from a book written to sell shortening. The method is sound; the sugar and the branded fat need attention.
- CottoleneA shortening of cottonseed oil blended with beef suet, sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, gone from shelves for decades. Substitute an equal amount of vegetable shortening, or butter for better flavour.
- One tablespoon of fat is not a typoThis is a very lean biscuit dough by modern standards, closer to a dumpling than a pastry. If you want a richer crust, 4 tablespoons of butter to 2 cups of flour gives a conventional shortcake-style top without upsetting the liquid.
- The sugarTwo cups of sugar to a quart of peaches is a period sweetness that will read as syrupy now. Half to two-thirds of a cup suits ripe fruit; go to a cup if the peaches are underripe or tart.
- A quart of sliced peachesRoughly 1 1/2 lb of fruit, or five to six medium peaches. Peel them; the recipe assumes it.
- How to steam itSet the buttered pudding dish on a rack inside a deep pot, pour in boiling water to come halfway up the dish, cover the pot tightly and keep the water at a steady simmer for the full hour, topping up with boiling water as needed. The dish itself is not covered, so the crust cooks in trapped steam.
- Sealing the edgeThe instruction to press the dough over the rim of the dish is the hinge. It holds the lid in place while the fruit boils underneath and keeps the crust from sinking into the juice.
- Judging it doneThe top should be firm and dry to the touch and a skewer through the centre of the crust should come out clean. Steamed dough stays pale; do not wait for colour.
- The missing lineThe text breaks off at "Serve with." Cream, a thin custard sauce, or hard sauce would all be usual accompaniments for a steamed fruit pudding of this date; any of the three is appropriate.
- YieldAbout six servings; a dish of roughly 1 1/2 quarts suits the quantities.
"Duff" is a dialect pronunciation of "dough," and is often said to have been carried into English and American kitchens by sailors: plum duff, the boiled flour-and-suet pudding, was a Sunday indulgence on shipboard, and the word stuck to any boiled or steamed dough pudding regardless of what fruit went under it. By the time this menu was written, the duff had come ashore and become a seasonal fruit dessert, made with whatever the month supplied. The presence of Cottolene in the ingredient list explains the book itself: 52 Sunday Dinners was published as promotional cookery for the N. K. Fairbank Company's cottonseed-oil shortening, which was marketed hard in the early twentieth century as a cleaner, cheaper alternative to lard. Recipes of this kind name the brand in place of the fat as a matter of course, which is why so many otherwise ordinary period recipes now read like advertisements.