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Peach Dessert
1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water 1/3 cup orange juice 1 cup peach pulp 2 cups cream, whipped 1/3 teaspoon almond flavoring Boil together sugar, water and orange juice until it threads. Pour over stiffly beaten egg whites gradually, stirring constantly. Add to whipped cream to which peach pulp has been added and add flavoring. Freeze 5 hours and serve with peach sauce. Serves 8.
A still-frozen mousse in the manner of a frozen dessert made without a churn: an Italian-style meringue folded into whipped cream and peach pulp. The hinge is the syrup temperature and the folding, not the freezing.
- Missing egg whitesThe method calls for stiffly beaten egg whites but the ingredient list does not give a quantity. For a batch of this size, three to four whites is the usual proportion; judge by the volume of the finished meringue, which should roughly equal the whipped cream.
- "Until it threads"Thread stage is 223-235F on a thermometer, when a spoonful drawn up leaves a fine thread. Below that the meringue will weep; much above and it stiffens before it is absorbed.
- Pouring the syrupAdd it in a thin stream down the side of the bowl with the mixer running, not into the beater, or it will spin onto the sides and set as hard candy. Beat until the bowl is no more than warm to the hand before folding in anything else.
- Egg-white safetySyrup at thread stage does not reliably bring whites to a pasteurizing temperature, and the dessert is never cooked afterward. Use pasteurized whites if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised.
- Peach pulpA cup means peeled ripe peaches pushed through a sieve or briefly blended, not canned slices in syrup. If the fruit is very juicy, drain it a little; excess water freezes into ice crystals.
- Almond flavoringA third of a teaspoon of almond extract is a real quantity in a soft dessert of this kind. Measure it rather than pouring, and use extract, not bitter almond oil.
- FreezingFive hours in a modern freezer at 0F will likely give a firmer result than an older refrigerator's ice compartment would have. Move it to the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes before serving so it cuts and spoons cleanly.
- The peach sauceNo sauce recipe is supplied here. Crushed sweetened peaches, with a squeeze of lemon and a little sugar dissolved over low heat and then cooled, would be a plausible accompaniment.
Frozen desserts built on a hot-syrup meringue folded into whipped cream were usually printed in American cookbooks as a "mousse" or "frozen dessert" -- the point being that they set solid in a mold without stirring, and so needed no ice-cream freezer and no crank. (The French parfait belongs to the same still-frozen family, though it is classically built on egg yolks rather than beaten whites.) Desserts of this kind suited a household with limited freezing space: they are made hours ahead, they hold, and they arrive at the table looking like more work than they were. The orange juice here does double duty, brightening the peach and adding acid that helps keep the syrup from crystallizing.