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Peach Delight
a Pare, cut in halves and stone dozen fine ripe peaches, reserving a few of the pits. Boil the pits in half a cup of water for fifteen minutes, then strain.
Mix well together a generous half cup of sugar and a tablespoon of flour. Butter a deep pudding dish well, put in a layer of peaches, sprinkle with the sugar, dot with bits of butter, cover with another layer of the peaches and proceed in this way until all are used. Pour over the water which was strained off the pits.
Make a rich biscuit crust for the top, roll out about half an inch thick, place it over the fruit, make several incisions to allow the steam to escape, and bake in a moderate oven. In serving, cut the crust in pieces as for pie, put the fruit on top and cover with whipped or plain cream.
This is a deep-dish peach cobbler under a biscuit lid, served upside down with the fruit spooned over the crust. Most of it translates directly; one step does not.
- The pit waterPeach kernels contain amygdalin, which releases hydrogen cyanide when the kernel is crushed or steeped. Whole, uncracked stones boiled fifteen minutes give up very little, which is why the practice survived, but there is no way to know how much. Skip it: use half a cup of plain water, or a scant quarter teaspoon of almond extract in water, which is the flavour the pits were there to supply.
- Typo in the first lineThe setting has scrambled it. Read it as "Pare, cut in halves and stone a dozen fine ripe peaches." Twelve medium peaches is somewhere in the region of 3 to 4 lb, rather less once pared and stoned.
- Moderate oven350F. A deep dish of raw fruit under biscuit needs 40 to 50 minutes, until the crust is browned through to the underside and the juices bubble at the cuts. A pale, damp seam where crust meets fruit means it is not done.
- Deep pudding dishA deep, straight-sided baking dish rather than a shallow pie plate; a dozen peaches will want 2 to 3 quarts of capacity. The fruit should come close to the rim, since it settles as it cooks.
- Sugar and flourA generous half cup of sugar with a tablespoon of flour is the only thickener; it makes a loose, syrupy fruit rather than a set filling, which is correct here because it is spooned over the crust. Very juicy peaches will take a second tablespoon of flour.
- Rich biscuit crustPeriod shorthand for a baking-powder biscuit dough made with a high proportion of butter or shortening, close to a shortcake. Roll it a half inch thick as directed and cut it a little smaller than the dish so steam can escape at the edges as well as the slashes.
- PeelingTo pare a dozen peaches quickly, score an X in the base and drop them in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then into ice water. Freestone varieties halve and stone cleanly; clingstones do not.
- YieldEight servings. Cream, plain or whipped, is called for in the original rather than offered as an option.
Cobblers of this kind, fruit baked under a biscuit lid rather than a pastry one, were the everyday American answer to a fruit pie in a household without much time for rolling and chilling dough. The step that dates this version is the boiled peach stones: cooks long used peach and apricot kernels as a cheap stand-in for bitter almond, and the same instinct produced the old flavouring called noyau. The connection between the two flavours is real chemistry rather than coincidence, since both owe their scent to benzaldehyde, though the kernels carry cyanogenic compounds alongside it, which is why commercial almond extract replaced them. The recipe ends by directing that the crust be cut and the fruit and cream heaped over it, turning a homely baked pudding into something presentable at table.