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Baked Peach Dumplings
Mix together 1 quart of sifted flour, 1 scant teaspoonful of salt and 2 teaspoonfuls of bakingnot ooze. powder. Rub in 3/4 of a cupful of butter (or butter and lard mixed). Make a soft dough, using sweet milk. Turn on a floured board and roll out half an inch thick. Have ready some canned peaches thoroughly drained, or use dried peaches which have been soaked until soft. Cut the dough in four inch squares and on each lay 2 pieces of fruit. Draw the corners together and pinch the edges tightly that the juice may Place close together in a greased baking pan. When the dish is filled, pour over the dumplings 2/3 of a cupful of cold water, cover tightly and put at once in a hot oven. Uncover at the end of forty minutes and let them brown quickly. With them serve a sauce made with 1 pint of the peach syrup (or syrup and water), an inch stick of cinnamon, sugar to taste, 1 scant tablespoonful of corn-starch mixed with a little cold water and a pinch of salt. Simmer until clear, add 1 tablespoonful of butter and stir until it is absorbed, then take from the fire.
A steam-then-brown dumpling: biscuit dough sealed around fruit, baked covered in a little water, then uncovered to colour. The text as printed has a line of type dropped into the wrong place, so read carefully before you start.
- The garbled line"2 teaspoonfuls of bakingnot ooze. powder" is a typesetting slip. The words not ooze belong at the end of the sentence about pinching the edges "that the juice may not ooze." The dough calls for 2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder.
- Flour by volumeA quart of sifted flour is 4 cups, about 1 lb on the old reckoning (roughly 450 g). Sift first and then measure, as the recipe specifies; flour measured unsifted packs denser and will give you more flour and a stiffer dough.
- Leavening is lightTwo teaspoons of baking powder to four cups of flour is about half what a modern biscuit dough uses. Period baking powders varied in strength; if your dumplings come out dense, go to a teaspoon per cup next time.
- Fat and liquidThree-quarters of a cup of butter is 12 tablespoons, about 170 g. Keep it cold and rub it in only to coarse crumbs. "Sweet milk" simply means fresh unsoured milk; expect to need 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups for a soft dough.
- The hinge: seal them tightEverything depends on the corners being pinched shut. If a dumpling opens, the fruit juice runs into the water in the pan and the dough boils rather than steams. Press the seams firmly and set the dumplings seam-side up, packed close so they hold each other closed.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" is conventionally read as 425-450F (220-230C), and the pan must go in at once so the water turns to steam immediately. Cover with a tight lid or a well-crimped sheet of foil for the first 40 minutes, then uncover and let them brown, which the recipe says should happen quickly.
- The fruitDrained canned peaches or rehydrated dried fruit are drier than fresh, which suits a sealed dumpling; fresh peaches would give off more juice and put more strain on the seams. Keep the drained syrup for the sauce.
- The sauceA pint of syrup with a scant tablespoon of cornstarch gives a thin pouring sauce, not a pudding. Slake the starch in cold liquid first and simmer until it loses its cloudiness; then, as the recipe directs, stir in the butter until it is absorbed and take the pan from the heat.
- YieldFour-inch squares from this quantity of dough give about a dozen dumplings, enough for eight to twelve servings depending on appetite.
Fruit dumplings baked in a covered pan with a little water are an old American economy dessert: the water makes steam, the steam cooks the dough without fat or a pastry crust to blind-bake, and one batch of biscuit dough stretches a small amount of fruit across a large family. That this version begins with drained canned peaches or soaked dried ones points to a cook working from the home-canning pantry and the winter fruit box rather than from the market. Peaches were commonly put up in North American households, and the reserved syrup doing double duty as the sauce base is the whole thrift of the dish in one line: nothing bought, nothing thrown out.