Peach Whip
Beat the whites of 3 eggs to a soft froth. Add 3 tablespoonfuls of sifted powdered sugar and beat to a stiff, glossy meringue. Peel ½ dozen peaches and press them through a sieve. Gradually add this pulp to the meringue, beating all the time and sprinkling in also 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice. Heap in tall glasses and serve at once.
A cold fruit fool built on uncooked meringue, of a type that was standard in home cookbooks for a century and is no longer considered safe to serve as written.
- Raw egg white is the problemThe whites are never heated at any point; the whipped foam is served straight from the bowl. Salmonella can be present on the shell and, less often, within the egg itself, and beating in cold fruit pulp does nothing to reduce it. This is the whole substance of the dish, not a garnish that could be left off.
- Who is most at riskUncooked egg foam is specifically discouraged for young children, pregnant women, the elderly and anyone immunocompromised, which is much of the audience for a soft, spoonable dessert. If you want a peach whip, use a current recipe built on pasteurised whites or a cooked meringue.
- Quantities as printedThe printed page gives half a dozen peaches and one teaspoonful of lemon juice, which is what our text now reads. Six peaches sieved into a three-egg meringue makes a soft whip that must be served at once, before it weeps.
- Powdered sugarPeriod "powdered sugar" usually means finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Three tablespoons is a very light hand for six peaches, which tells you the fruit was expected to be fully ripe and sweet.
- Why "serve at once"An unstabilised white-of-egg foam loaded with watery fruit pulp begins to weep within minutes; the acid in the lemon juice slows the collapse a little but does not prevent it. The instruction is structural, not a matter of manners.
- YieldThe recipe gives none; three whites and half a dozen peaches would plausibly fill about four tall glasses, or six smaller ones.
Whips, fools and snows of this kind fill the dessert chapters of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American household books because they were cheap, quick and required no ice, no oven and no cream. Three eggs and a few pieces of fruit could be turned into something that looked lavish in a tall glass. The technique is older than the book: "snow" desserts of beaten white and fruit pulp are recorded in English cookery well before refrigeration, and the family includes apple snow, prune whip and the baked variants that later cooks set in the oven. Oven-set versions of these desserts remain in modern cookbooks while the raw ones have largely disappeared.