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Sea-Urchins
Wrap pared peaches, stuffed with maraschino cherries and cinnamon, in rich biscuit dough; bake in moderate oven; when done insert browned almonds throughout; have a thick sauce made of syrup and minced fruit.
A peach dumpling dressed up as a sea creature: the almonds pushed into the baked crust are the spines. The original assumes you know how to build a biscuit-dough dumpling, so most of the work here is filling in the numbers.
- Pit, don't just pareThe peaches have to be halved and stoned, then reassembled around the cherries, or peeled whole and the stone removed from the stem end with a small knife. Freestone peaches make this far easier than clingstones.
- Rich biscuit doughMost likely a baking-powder dough enriched with more fat than a plain biscuit. Something like 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup butter or shortening, and 2/3 cup milk will do. Roll it thick enough to seal without tearing, around 1/4 inch.
- Moderate oven350F. Allow 35 to 45 minutes: the crust browns well before the fruit inside is tender, so judge doneness by pressing a skewer through the dough into the peach.
- Cinnamon quantityNone is given. A scant 1/4 teaspoon per peach, mixed with a teaspoon of sugar, is enough; more turns the syrup muddy.
- Maraschino cherriesBefore the brined-and-dyed American product became standard in the early twentieth century, maraschino cherries were marasca cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, and were darker and less uniformly red than the modern kind. Amarena cherries, or Luxardo's maraschino cherries in syrup, are the closer substitute.
- Inserting the almondsBlanch, split and toast the almonds, then push them into the hot crust as soon as the dumplings leave the oven, while it is still soft enough to accept them without cracking. Cooled crust splits.
- The sauceThin peach or cherry syrup reduced until it coats a spoon, with a few tablespoons of minced peach or cherry stirred in off the heat. Serve warm, poured around rather than over, so the spines stay visible.
- YieldOne dumpling per person, so scale by the number of peaches. They are best within an hour of baking; the crust softens as the fruit gives up juice.
Fancy names for plain fruit dumplings were common in turn-of-the-century American cookery, when a dish was expected to look composed rather than merely cooked. The dish underneath is the peach dumpling common wherever orchards and baking powder met -- fruit sealed in biscuit dough and baked, sauced with its own syrup. What makes it a "sea-urchin" is purely the last step: split toasted almonds pressed into the crust to suggest spines, the same decorative impulse behind the almond-spiked hedgehog puddings of earlier English cookbooks. The maraschino cherry suggests a date no earlier than the later nineteenth century, when bottled imported cherries became more widely available to households.