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PEACH CAKES (a pretty dish for a Juvenile party)
Divide carefully the yolks from the whites of four eggs; beat the yolks thoroughly, and mix with them six ounces of finely-powdered and sifted loaf sugar, a small pinch of salt, and a few drops of almond flavouring. Beat these ingredients thoroughly for a quarter of an hour, then dredge in gradually six ounces of fine flour, and afterwards the whites of the eggs, which have been whisked to a solid froth. Beat the mixture five minutes longer, then drop it, in small rounds of uniform size, either upon a buttered and floured baking-tin or upon a sheet of thick cartridge paper; bake in a brisk oven until they are lightly browned. The cakes must be carefully watched or they will be too highly coloured. When they are sufficiently baked, spread a little peach jam upon the under parts, and stick the cakes together in two, so that they will resemble as nearly as possible a peach in size and shape. Cover them over very thinly with a little white icing, made by beating the whites of two eggs to a firm froth, and then mixing with them half a pound of finely-sifted loaf sugar and a few drops of lemon-juice, the whisking being continued until the liquid looks thick, smooth, and white. Let the icing dry, and, if liked, brush over one side of the cakes with a little water, coloured with cochineal, to make them look more like peaches. Serve the cakes neatly arranged on a glass dish, with whipped cream in the centre. Time to bake, eight to twelve minutes. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. per pound.
This is a plain sponge-drop batter — the same mixture Victorian books call Savoy or sponge biscuit — sandwiched with jam, iced, and tinted to look like fruit. The batter is the only part that needs real attention.
- The hinge: do not beat after the whites go inThe original tells you to beat five minutes more once the whisked whites and flour are added. That was written for a slack hand-beaten batter; with a stand mixer it will knock all the air out and give you flat, tough discs. Fold the flour and whites in alternately with a spatula, just to combine, and stop.
- Loaf sugarSugar came as a hard cone to be broken and pounded, so "finely-powdered and sifted loaf sugar" is closest to caster sugar in the batter; for the icing the sense is a very finely sifted sugar, for which modern icing (confectioners') sugar stands in. Six ounces is roughly a scant cup of caster; half a pound of sifted icing sugar is roughly two cups.
- Beating the yolksA quarter of an hour by hand equals four to five minutes in a mixer on medium-high — the yolks and sugar should be pale, thick, and fall from the whisk in a ribbon that holds a moment on the surface.
- A brisk ovenRead that as roughly 400-425F. These are small and thin; at the upper end they colour before the centres set, which is exactly the fault the recipe warns against. Eight to twelve minutes is what the recipe gives, and they should be barely blond, not browned.
- Cartridge paperHeavy drawing paper, used because it peeled off cleanly. Parchment does the same job and needs no butter or flour.
- Almond flavouringAt this period this could mean bitter-almond essence, which carried genuine cyanide risk in quantity. Modern almond extract is benzaldehyde-based and safe; a few drops is still the right dose, as it overwhelms a plain sponge quickly.
- The icing contains raw egg whiteBeaten whites with sugar and lemon juice is uncooked royal icing, and it is left to air-dry rather than baked. Pasteurised whites or meringue powder give the identical result without the risk, which matters here because the stated audience is children.
- CochinealStill sold as carmine or cochineal extract. The recipe has you let the icing dry first, then brush the coloured water over one side of each cake; keep it sparing and to one cheek of each "peach" -- the point is a blush, not a coat.
- YieldFour eggs and six ounces of flour should give somewhere in the region of three dozen drops, so around eighteen finished peaches, depending on how small the rounds are dropped. The recipe specifies only "whipped cream" in the centre of the dish, without saying whether it is sweetened.
Sponge drops of this kind were a staple of the Victorian confectioner: the batter is the same one used for Savoy biscuits, ladyfingers and the linings of charlottes, and cooks kept it in mind precisely because it could be piped or dropped into any shape wanted. Turning two of them into an imitation peach belongs to a long confectionery habit of making sugar mimic fruit, a habit that runs from marchpane fruits of the sixteenth century through to the moulded almond-paste apples and pears of nineteenth-century French pastry. Cassell's flags it as "a pretty dish for a Juvenile party" because children's parties were a recognised category of Victorian domestic entertaining with their own expectations of novelty and display, and because a cook who already had jam, egg whites and cochineal on hand could produce something ornamental at a costed 2s. 6d. per pound — the sort of figure the book gives throughout so a mistress could check the expense against her housekeeping book.