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Peach Leather
Peel and crush very ripe peaches, spread on platters, and dry in slow oven. It will be like leather when thoroughly dried. Roll it up and put away in bags. When needed for use soak over night with just a little water and it should then be ready for using without stewing and without sugar.
This is fruit leather, written before anyone called it that. The whole recipe hinges on drying the purée slowly enough that it never bakes, and thoroughly enough that no soft spots remain to mould in the bag.
- "Slow oven" here means slower than 300F"Slow oven" here means slower than a period slow oven -- in nineteenth-century usage that generally meant somewhere around 250-300F, but that will set and brown a thin fruit puree rather than dry it. Use the lowest setting your oven offers, ideally 140-170F, with the door propped an inch on a wooden spoon so moisture escapes. A dehydrator at 135F does the job with no fuss.
- Platters, then and nowThe recipe specifies only "platters" and a slow oven, with no indication of material. Use rimmed sheet pans lined with parchment or a silicone mat; unlined metal and untreated pottery both grip the dried sheet and it tears coming off.
- Thickness governs everythingSpread to about an eighth of an inch, slightly thicker at the centre than the edges, which dry first and scorch. Expect 6 to 10 hours at low oven temperature, longer in humid weather.
- How to know it is doneThoroughly dried means tacky but not sticky, peeling away cleanly in one piece, with no glossy or soft patches anywhere. Any damp spot rolled into the coil will mould the whole roll within weeks.
- Crush, but not too smoothPeel the peaches by blanching them 30 seconds in boiling water and slipping the skins. Crushing by hand or with a potato masher gives a slightly textured purée; a blender whips in air, which makes the sheet foam up and dry unevenly.
- StorageThe recipe says only to roll the sheets and put them away in bags, presumably cloth. Roll the sheets in parchment and keep them in an airtight jar or a zip bag; refrigerate or freeze in a humid climate. Good leather keeps several months, longer frozen.
- YieldRoughly 3 lb of ripe peaches, about 8 medium fruit, reduces to sheets weighing 6 to 8 ounces in total; spread at an eighth of an inch it will need about two half-sheet pans.
- The soaking instructionSoaking overnight reconstitutes the leather into a thick peach sauce for pies, puddings or spooning over cereal. Use just enough water to cover; the point of the note is that ripe fruit dried this way needs neither stewing nor added sugar.
Fruit leather is one of the oldest forms of preserving there is, older than canning and cheaper than sugar, and versions turn up wherever fruit ripens faster than a household can eat it: Middle Eastern amardine from apricots, Georgian t'klapi from plums, Appalachian apple and peach leathers. Peach leather in particular was a fixture of Southern farm kitchens in the nineteenth century, made when a tree dropped more than could be sold, eaten, or put up in jars. Home canning was spreading in this period but still demanded jars, rubber rings and a hot afternoon at the stove, while leather asked only for ripe fruit, a platter and the residual heat of an oven already lit for something else.