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Snowball Peaches
Make a syrup of 1 cup each of sugar and water, cooked just short of the thread stage, flavor with lemon juice. Place whole ripe (peeled) or halves of canned peaches in the syrup while it is boiling hot, and leave there until thoroughly cold. Drain the peaches. If whole peaches are used, roll each one in desiccated cocoanut or fresh grated cocoanut. If halves of canned peaches are used fill the cavities with chopped nuts, press two halves together and roll in the cocoanut, fastening together with toothpick if necessary. Serve with the peach syrup and plain cream.
A cold fruit dessert built on a light sugar syrup, dressed to look like a snowball. The syrup stage and the long cooling are the whole technique.
- Just short of the thread stageThread stage is usually given as somewhere around 230F on a candy thermometer, so "just short" means a syrup that runs off the spoon in a heavy stream but does not yet spin a thread. Boil until it reaches that point rather than by the clock.
- Cool undisturbedPouring boiling syrup over the fruit and letting it stand until thoroughly cold is what sweetens and firms the peach. The recipe asks only that it be left until cold; chill afterwards if you like.
- Peeling fresh peachesThirty seconds in boiling water and a plunge into cold will slip the skins from ripe freestone peaches. Firm-ripe fruit holds its shape in the hot syrup better than very soft fruit.
- CocoanutDesiccated coconut is unsweetened dried shredded coconut, still sold as such. Modern bagged "sweetened flaked coconut" will work but pushes the dessert considerably sweeter; fine unsweetened shred gives the intended snowball look.
- Canned halvesCanned peaches are already packed in syrup, so drain them well before the hot syrup goes on. A 15-oz can gives roughly four to six halves, or two to three assembled balls.
- Chopped nutsWalnuts, pecans or blanched almonds all suit. Chop them fine enough that the two halves close without gaping, and remove the toothpicks before serving.
- Plain creamThis means unwhipped cream, poured at table. Something lighter than modern heavy cream, light cream or half-and-half, is probably nearer the period "thin cream."
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. One cup each of sugar and water makes a modest amount of syrup, enough for only a few peaches; you need enough to cover the fruit, so scale up as required. Count one whole peach or one assembled pair of halves per person.