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Sherried Peach Pudding
Line a dish with stale sponge cake dipped in sherry, and heap on this pared, halved peaches. Spread a meringue over the top and brown quickly by placing the puddingdish in another which is partly filled with ice water. In this way the top will brown without heating the peaches. Serve with cream.
An early version of the baked-Alaska trick: the meringue is browned by fierce top heat while the dish itself sits in ice water, so the fruit underneath stays cold. The whole recipe hinges on that contrast, and on working fast.
- Brown it under the broiler, not in the ovenBrown it under high top heat, not a moderate oven -- "brown quickly" means the hottest source you have for the shortest time. A broiler, the dish two or three inches below the element, one to three minutes with the door open and your eyes on it. Anything slower risks warming the peaches through and defeating the point.
- The ice-water bathChoose an outer dish wide enough that the pudding dish sits in it without floating, and fill it with water and ice cubes to about half the depth of the inner dish. Use metal or tempered glass for the inner dish; old-fashioned earthenware moving from ice water to broiler heat can crack.
- Meringue quantities, which the original omitsFor a dish holding six or so peach halves, figure three egg whites beaten to firm peaks with about 6 tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt. Spread it so it seals down to the edge of the dish everywhere — gaps let heat reach the fruit.
- Raw egg whiteUnder the broiler for two minutes the meringue browns on top and stays essentially uncooked underneath, which is exactly what this recipe intends. If that is a concern for who you are feeding, make a cooked meringue instead: Swiss (whites and sugar whisked over simmering water to 160F, then beaten) or Italian (hot sugar syrup beaten into the whites). Both brown the same way and hold better.
- Stale sponge cakeThe original calls for stale, and fresh sponge does tend to go pasty when it meets sherry. Cut it into finger-thick slices, dip rather than soak -- a second or two per side -- and line the bottom and sides. Ladyfingers or trifle sponges can stand in.
- The sherryAn oloroso or a cream sherry suits this best; dry fino is thin here. Skip the cooking sherry, which is salted.
- Peaches"Pared" means peeled. Score the skins, drop the peaches in boiling water for 30 to 45 seconds, then into ice water and the skins slip off. Use fruit that is ripe but firm; genuinely soft peaches collapse into the cake. Out of season, drained canned halves are a fair substitute.
- ServingServe at once, while the top is warm and the fruit cold; it will not hold. The original gives no yield. "Cream" here most likely means plain pouring cream rather than whipped.
This belongs to the large family of English trifles and charlottes that reached American cookbooks by way of the sherry-soaked sponge: stale cake, wine, fruit, and something rich on top, all assembled rather than cooked. What sets this version apart is the insulating trick, the same physics behind baked Alaska and the dish often paired with it, omelette norvégienne — beaten egg white is full of air and conducts heat badly, so a thick meringue shell will take a scorching while what lies beneath it stays cold. Nineteenth-century confectioners exploited that with ice cream; here the ice water bath does the extra work, which suggests a kitchen without reliable refrigeration hedging its bets. Its place in a chapter on peaches and apricots is telling too: books of this period devoted whole sections to the peach, plausibly because the fresh season was short, local, and glorious, and a cook wanted a dozen ways to put ripe fruit on the table before it went over.