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Peach Filling
1 cup beaten cream 1 cup peach pulp 1 cup powdered sugar 2 tablespoons lemon juice few grains salt Mix ingredients, spread between cake.
A whipped-cream and fruit filling of the sort that appears throughout early twentieth-century American cake chapters. It is simple, but the proportions as written are wetter than most cooks expect.
- The hinge: drain the peachesA cup of fresh peach pulp carries a great deal of juice, and combined with a cup of cream it will slump out of a cake within the hour. Sieve or mash ripe peeled peaches, let the pulp sit in a strainer for 20 to 30 minutes, and use the drained solids.
- "Beaten cream"Heavy or whipping cream beaten to firm peaks, not stiff and grainy. The original does not say whether the cup is measured before or after whipping; either reading is possible, and the choice changes the density of the filling.
- Powdered sugarIn 1907 "powdered sugar" could mean a finely ground granulated sugar rather than today's confectioners' sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar is a workable substitute here, and its starch helps hold the filling together.
- A cup of sugar is a lotAgainst a cup of cream and a cup of fruit, this is a very sweet filling by current taste. Half to two-thirds of a cup suits ripe summer peaches, and the lemon juice can go in to taste.
- Order of mixingWhip the cream with the sugar first, then fold in the pulp, lemon juice and salt. Dumping everything together and beating will deflate the cream and can make it curdle against the acid.
- Canned or frozen fruitDrained canned peaches work; reduce the sugar further since they are packed in syrup. Frozen peaches should be thawed and drained hard, as they shed a surprising amount of water.
- Yield and keepingEnough to fill one two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake generously. Assemble close to serving, keep refrigerated, and eat the same day; the fruit continues to weep.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard and published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, in 1907 — one of many cookbooks issued by food firms to put their product in home kitchens. The chocolate recipes are the point of the book, but general chapters like this one were included to make it a usable household volume rather than a pamphlet. Whipped-cream fruit fillings belonged to the summer end of the layer-cake repertoire, when fresh peaches were briefly abundant.