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Peach Soufflé
Peel and rub seven or eight fully ripe peaches through a sieve; stir into them a cup of powdered sugar and the beaten yolks of three eggs. Whisk together for eight minutes. Set aside until the whites of six eggs are beaten stiff, then fold carefully into the peach and egg mixture; turn the whole into a soufflé dish, sprinkle with sugar, and bake in brisk oven six minutes.
A very lean soufflé: no butter, no flour, no milk, just peach purée held up by egg. That makes it fast, fragile, and dependent on how wet your fruit is.
- The hinge: drain the puréeSeven or eight ripe peaches give somewhere between two and four cups of purée depending on their size, and ripe freestones at their peak run watery. Let the sieved pulp sit in a strainer for 15 minutes, or cook it down slightly and cool it, or the soufflé will weep and collapse in the dish.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 400-425F. There is no flour to set, so high heat is right: the egg white has to inflate and firm before the fruit slumps.
- Six minutes is for small dishesA single soufflé dish holding this much mixture will not be cooked through in six minutes. Divide it among six to eight buttered and sugared ramekins for 8-12 minutes, or expect 18-25 minutes for a 1.5-quart dish, taking it out while the centre still trembles.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period this usually means granulated sugar ground fine, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Either works here; superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match and dissolves into the purée without grit.
- Eight minutes of whiskingThat instruction assumes a hand whisk and a cook building air into the yolks and sugar. Three to four minutes with a mixer on medium-high gets the same pale, thick ribbon.
- Six whites to three yolksNot a misprint, and not to be evened out. The extra whites are the whole structure. Beat them to firm but still glossy peaks, then fold in three additions, sacrificing the first to loosen the heavy purée.
- Prepare the dish firstButter the dish and coat it with sugar before the whites are folded, and preheat the oven fully. Once the mixture is assembled it should go straight in.
- ServingServes six. Carry it to the table the moment it comes out; a flourless fruit soufflé sinks within a few minutes and cannot be rescued.
Fruit soufflés like this belong to the late nineteenth-century American dessert repertoire. The dish is essentially a French soufflé without a béchamel base — no butter, no flour, no scalded milk — a purée-and-meringue form that is also well established in professional French cookery. It also reflects the peach's place in the period: canning and shipping were expanding fast, but the finest fruit was still eaten within a day or two of picking, and recipes calling for "fully ripe" peaches assumed a summer glut that had to be used before it spoiled. Sieving the fruit by hand, before food mills were common in home kitchens, was the standard way to make a smooth purée and remove the skins and fibre.