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Peaches, Flanc of; or Peaches in a Raised Crust
Make three-quarters of a pound of good short crust, and roll it out until it is half an inch thick. Butter well the inside of a mould, and line it with the crust, pressing the dough so that it may take the form of the mould. Pinch the part that rises above the mould with the pincers, fill the case with flour, and bake in a moderate oven. When the crust is firm, remove the flour, carefully take the case out of the mould, and put it into the oven a few minutes longer to dry. Divide a dozen peaches into halves, boil them until tender in a syrup made of six ounces of loaf sugar and half a pint of water. When they are sufficiently cooked, lift them out one by one, and put them into the case. Boil the syrup a few minutes longer, add a table-spoonful of lemon-juice, colour with a little cochineal, let it cool, then pour it over the fruit. A few of the kernels, blanched and quartered, may be introduced, if liked. Time, about one hour to bake the flanc; twenty minutes to prepare the fruit. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian blind-baked pastry case filled with poached peaches — essentially a free-standing flan. Most of the work is in the crust, and most of the risk is in overcooking the fruit.
- Omit the kernelsPeach kernels contain amygdalin and release hydrogen cyanide when crushed or chewed, which is precisely why the Victorians liked them for their bitter-almond flavour. The addition is optional in the original; leave it out and use a drop of almond extract if you want the note.
- "Moderate oven"The book gives no figure; the term is conventionally taken as somewhere around 350F/175C. The recipe allows about an hour to bake the flanc, then a few minutes more out of the mould to dry the inner wall.
- Baking blind with flourThe flour here does the job of ceramic beans or rice. It works, and the flour can be sieved and reused for baking, but line the case with parchment first or you will spend a long time brushing it out of the crimped edge.
- The mouldAny straight-sided tin will do, but a loose-bottomed or springform tin makes unmoulding far less fraught than the buttered-and-inverted method implied. "Pincers" are pastry crimping tongs; fingers or a fork edge work as well.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of a pound of short crust is about 340g of finished pastry. Half a pint is 10 imperial fl oz, roughly 1¼ US cups. Loaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone; ordinary granulated is the direct equivalent.
- Poaching timeThe recipe's twenty minutes covers preparing the fruit, not boiling alone. Ripe peaches will collapse well before that; firm, slightly underripe fruit needs five to eight minutes in simmering syrup. Test with a skewer and lift them out the moment they yield.
- PeelingThe recipe says nothing about skins. Halved peaches dropped in the hot syrup will loosen their skins, but it is cleaner to blanch and peel them for thirty seconds beforehand, or the skins curl off into the glaze.
- CochinealStill sold as carmine or E120, and it is an insect-derived colour — worth knowing if serving vegetarians. A splash of raspberry or redcurrant juice reduced into the syrup gives colour and flavour together.
- YieldFive or six, as stated. Assemble no more than an hour or two before serving; the syrup will eventually soak the base.
"Flanc" here is an older spelling of flan, from the Old French flaon, meaning a flat open tart — the raised, free-standing pastry case was a familiar form in nineteenth-century pâtisserie, built in a mould, baked empty and filled cold so the crust stayed crisp. The costing of 2s. 6d. and the note "sufficient for five or six persons" are typical of the book's format. Preserving whole or halved fruit in a sugar syrup was routine work in such kitchens through the late summer, and a flanc was one of the more decorative ways to spend the result.