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Peach Pudding
Dissolve half an ounce of gelatine in a little warm water. Whip a pint of cream stiffly, and add two table-spoonfuls of castor sugar. Chop half a tin of peaches into small pieces. Mix all together, and pour into a wet mould. Place on ice to harden, and turn out when required.
A cold gelatine cream in the Victorian mould tradition — closer to a peach fool set firm than to anything baked. Success turns almost entirely on the temperature of the gelatine when it meets the cream.
- The hinge: gelatine temperatureDissolved gelatine poured hot into cold whipped cream sets on contact and leaves rubbery threads through the pudding. Let it cool until it is barely warm to the finger but still fluid, then trickle it in while folding steadily.
- Gelatine, then and nowHalf an ounce is about 14 g — roughly seven sheets, or two sachets of powder. Modern powdered gelatine should be sprinkled over a few tablespoons of cold water and left to swell for five minutes before being warmed to clear; period gelatine was often less finely processed and may well have wanted a longer soak.
- Imperial pintA British pint is 20 fl oz, so about 2½ US cups (about 570 ml) of double or heavy cream. Whipped, it roughly doubles in volume, which with the fruit suits a mould of around 1½ quarts.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Ordinary granulated will do but dissolves less readily in cold cream; a whizz in a food processor gets you there.
- Whip less than stifflyThe instruction to whip stiffly predates the gelatine going in. Stop at soft, floppy peaks — the gelatine supplies the structure, and over-whipped cream turns grainy once it is folded and chilled.
- Half a tin of peachesHalf a tin is roughly three or four canned halves. Drain them well and pat dry, since syrup clinging to the fruit slackens the set.
- Wet mould, and the iceRinsing the mould in cold water and leaving it wet is what lets the pudding drop out cleanly. "Place on ice" means the refrigerator now: four to six hours, or overnight. To turn out, dip the mould a few seconds in warm water and invert onto a wetted plate.
- YieldSix modest servings. It is rich, and a spoonful of the peach syrup or some fresh fruit alongside cuts it.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the moulded cream, when a table was judged partly on whether the cook could turn out a shapely dome without cracks. Commercial sheet and powdered gelatine, widely available from the second half of the nineteenth century, reduced the need for the laborious home boiling of calves' feet for stock jelly and put dishes like this within reach of more households — as did canned fruit, which is the quiet novelty here. Tinned peaches, much of the supply American by the 1880s and 1890s, gave British cooks a soft, sweet, ready-syruped fruit in any season, and this recipe writes "half a tin" as though it were a standard measure. The result is a dish that reads as thoroughly Victorian in form and thoroughly modern in supply chain.