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An Easy Dessert
Into each sherbet cup put a large t of rich cream and 2 half peaches. Beat the whites of 2 eggs to stiff froth; add ½ glass currant jelly and again beat until stiff. Put this mixture on top of peaches. Keep cool until served. Serves six.
Mrs. James H. Swan.
A late-Victorian parlour dessert built on an uncooked egg-white foam, which is where it fails for a modern table. The notes below explain the vocabulary and the hazard.
- Why it cannot be made as writtenThe topping is raw egg white, beaten with jelly and never heated at any stage. Whole shell eggs can carry Salmonella in the white as well as the yolk, and nothing in this method reduces it. Use a current recipe if you want a jelly-and-cream peach dessert.
- Holding it cold makes it worse, not saferHolding it cold does not make it safe -- "Keep cool until served" may mean an icebox or simply a cool larder; the recipe does not say. Either way, a protein foam standing for an hour or two is exactly the condition in which contamination multiplies; chilling slows that but does not undo it.
- "A large t"Almost certainly an abbreviation for a spoon measure, but which one is unclear. Abbreviations in books of this kind were inconsistent; a teaspoon of cream under two peach halves seems too little, so a tablespoon is the likelier reading, though this is an inference rather than something the text settles.
- "Rich cream"Unhomogenised cream skimmed from the top of the milk. Its fat content varied a good deal and was not necessarily as high as modern heavy cream. It was poured, not whipped, in this recipe.
- "½ glass currant jelly"A jelly glass of the period held around 6 to 8 fluid ounces, so half a glass is somewhere near a third to half a cup. The original is genuinely imprecise here.
- Half peachesPeach halves, most likely put up in syrup, though the recipe does not say so and fresh halved peaches would also fit. Two per cup for six servings is twelve halves.
- Sherbet cupsSmall stemmed glasses of about four to six ounces, used for ices and fruit desserts. Any small footed glass gives the same effect.
Community cookbooks of this kind are full of desserts like this one: no baking, no stove, a few spoonfuls of cream and whatever fruit had been put up in jars, assembled in the good glassware. Currant jelly was a staple of that pantry -- currants set firmly without added pectin, which made jelly-making practical before commercial pectin was widely sold. Uncooked egg-white foams, folded with jam or jelly and heaped over fruit, appear across the period under names such as snow, sponge and whip. The contribution is signed by Mrs. James H. Swan in the manner of the genre, where recipes carried the married name of the woman who supplied them.