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Suedoise of Peaches
Boil six ounces of refined sugar in half a pint of water till it is a clear syrup. Put into this half a dozen fine ripe peaches which have been merely wiped with a soft cloth, and let them simmer very gently for six or eight minutes. Lift them out carefully, pare them, split them in halves, and let them soak for a while in half the syrup. Into the other half throw two pounds of ripe peaches which have been pared and split in halves, and boil them till they form a smooth dry pulp. Add as much sugar as they require to sweeten them pleasantly, and also a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice to bring out the flavour. Spread a layer of this pulp at the bottom of a dish arrange the peaches upon it, leaving out three or four of the halves, and fill all the empty spaces with the pulp. Stick half a blanched peach-kernel in each peach, and pour over all the reduced syrup. Garnish the dish with a border of macaroons or ratafias, or even of candied peel stamped in fancy shapes. Pile the unused halves of peaches on the top of the dish, and serve. When peaches are expensive, the fruit pulp may be made of apples instead of peaches. Time to simmer the whole peaches, six to eight minutes; to boil the fruit to pulp, from three-quarters of an hour to one hour. Probable cost, peaches, very variable. Sufficient for six persons.
A layered fresh-peach dessert of the kind Victorian kitchens built up in a glass dish. The construction is sound, but one of the garnishes is not, and it is repeated six times over.
- The peach kernels are the problemThe instruction to "stick half a blanched peach-kernel in each peach" puts the seed inside the stone onto the plate as food. Peach kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is chewed or comes into contact with moisture and gut enzymes. The dose in a raw kernel varies enormously between fruit, so there is no way to judge what six halves amount to.
- Blanching does not make them safeBlanching here means slipping off the brown skin, not deactivating anything. The kernels are added uncooked at the end and are eaten as they are, so nothing in the method reduces the cyanogenic content.
- Why Victorian cooks used themPeach and apricot kernels were a standard cheap source of the bitter-almond flavour then valued in fruit desserts and ratafia biscuits, and cookbooks of the period treat kernels, bitter almonds and laurel leaves as broadly interchangeable flavourings. All three are now restricted or largely avoided in home cooking for the same reason.
- The apple variation does not helpSubstituting apple pulp for the two pounds of peaches, as the book suggests when peaches are dear, changes only the base. The kernel garnish is still called for.
- MeasurementsThis is a British book, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups, and six ounces of "refined" sugar is ordinary white granulated. Ratafias are small bitter-almond macaroons, themselves traditionally kernel-flavoured.
- If you want the dessertUse a current recipe for a layered fresh peach compote or fruit fool. Nothing about the layering, the syrup or the lemon juice needs correcting; only the kernels do, and we are not in the business of publishing a doctored version of somebody else's page.
A suédoise in nineteenth-century French and Anglo-French cookery meant a fruit dessert built up in layers or set in a mould with a stiff purée, usually of apple or plum, the name meaning simply "Swedish" and its connection to Sweden generally treated as conventional rather than documented. The dish demonstrates a useful trick: a batch of cheap or bruised fruit boiled down to a dry pulp provides both the flavour base and the mortar that holds better-looking fruit in position, so that half a dozen perfect peaches can be made to furnish a dish for six. The garnish of macaroons or ratafias points to the same period's taste for the bitter-almond note, which is why kernels from the peach stones themselves were pressed into service — a habit that survived in print long after the peaches came in by rail rather than off the wall of a kitchen garden.