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Croquante of Peaches
18 nice ripe peaches 1 pound of sugar 1 pint of small strawberries ½ pint of water The recipe for Charlotte Russe Boil the sugar and water together until it is brittle when dropped in cold water; that is, when it begins to boil up in large bubbles, take a little of it on a spoon and drop it into cold water; if it snaps in breaking, it is sufficiently boiled. Take it from the fire immediately. Rub a plain two-quart mould with melted butter or oil. Have ready the peaches pared, cut into halves and stoned, the strawberries stemmed. Put a piece of peach on a wooden skewer, dip it in the syrup, then dip a berry in the syrup, and place in the centre of the peach where the stone was taken out, then press it against the side of the mould, and so continue until the mould is lined, then stand away in a cold place to harden. When hard, fill with Charlotte Russe, and stand in a cold place for an hour or two. When ready to serve, put a plate over the mould, turn it upside down, wipe the outside of the mould with a warm cloth, then carefully lift it off. This dish is both beautiful and good.
A moulded charlotte with a shell of caramel-glazed fruit. The whole thing stands or falls on the sugar syrup reaching hard-crack and staying there, so read that step before you pare a single peach.
- The hinge: hard crack"Snaps in breaking" when dropped in cold water is the hard-crack stage, 300-310F on a thermometer. At the soft-crack stage just below it the coating stays tacky, the fruit slides, and the lining collapses when you unmould.
- That much waterA pound of sugar to 1 s pints of water is an unusually thin syrup and will take a long time to boil down. There is no harm in it beyond the wait, but expect a long stretch of hard boiling before it reaches temperature, and do not stir once it is clear.
- Keeping the syrup workableCaramel at hard crack stiffens within a minute or two off the heat. Be prepared to rewarm it gently once or twice while you work through eighteen peaches.
- Wet fruit is the enemyPeaches and strawberries both weep. Pat every piece thoroughly dry before dipping; surface moisture makes the caramel seize and turn cloudy, and the shell will weep and slump in the refrigerator.
- The mouldA plain two-quart mould means a smooth-sided charlotte or bombe mould, not a fluted one, since fluting makes unmoulding a rigid sugar shell nearly impossible. Oil rather than butter is the safer choice; butter's water content can dull the caramel.
- Charlotte RusseThe book's own recipe is referred to here rather than repeated. The usual nineteenth-century version is sweetened whipped cream set with gelatin (sometimes over a light custard base), poured in soft and chilled firm. If you are substituting a modern version, use one that sets firmly enough to hold a turned-out shape.
- Unmoulding"Wipe the outside with a warm cloth" means barely warm and barely a moment. Too much heat, or a wet cloth held too long, will soften the sugar shell into syrup and ruin the fruit lining.
- Timing and yieldA two-quart mould serves ten to twelve. Assemble it the day you serve it. Caramel draws moisture from the air and from the fruit, so the shell begins to go sticky within a few hours in the refrigerator and will be dull and running by the next day.
Croquante, from the French croquant, "crunchy," was a confectioner's term for constructions built from hard-boiled sugar: nut brittles, spun-sugar work, and moulded shells of glazed fruit like this one. It belonged to the confectioner's side of the kitchen rather than the cook's, and its appearance in a household book of hot-weather cookery says a good deal about what an ambitious American hostess was expected to attempt in the late nineteenth century. The pairing with Charlotte Russe is characteristic of the period; that dish, a mould lined with ladyfingers or sponge and filled with whipped cream, is generally credited to the chef Car ême in the early nineteenth century and had become a fixture of the American dessert table by mid-century, so a recipe book could simply point to it by name. Here the sugar-glazed fruit replaces the sponge lining, which makes the whole dish a piece of warm-weather theatre: no baking, no hot oven, cold cream inside a fruit shell, and served the moment it comes out of the mould before the caramel has time to soften.