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Peaches, Compote of
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.- pint of syrup, about 15 small peaches. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Peaches that are not very large, and that would not look well for dessert, answer very nicely for a compote. Divide the peaches, take out the stones, and pare the fruit; make a syrup by recipe, put in the PEACH. peaches, and stew them gently for about 10 minutes. Take them out without breaking, arrange them on a glass dish, boil the syrup for 2 or 3 minutes, let it cool, pour it over the fruit, and, when cold, it will be ready for table.
TIME.-10 minutes.
SEASONABLE in August and September.
INGREDIENTS. - Peaches Preserved in Brandy.
To every lb. of fruit, weighed before being stoned, allow 1/4 lb. of finely-pounded loaf sugar, brandy.
Let the fruit be gathered in dry weather; wipe and weigh it, and remove the stones as carefully as possible, without injuring PEARS, BAKED. the peaches much. Put them into a jar, sprinkle amongst them pounded loaf sugar in the above proportion, and pour brandy over the fruit. Cover the jar down closely, place it in a saucepan of boiling water over the fire, and bring the brandy to the simmering point, but do not allow it to boil. Take the fruit out carefully, without breaking it; put it into small jars, pour over it the brandy, and, when cold, exclude the air by covering the jars with bladders, or tissue-paper, brushed over on both sides with the white of an egg. Apricots may be done in the same manner, and, if properly prepared, will be found delicious.
TIME. From 10 to 20 minutes to bring the brandy to the simmering point.
SEASONABLE in August and September.
Pears à l'Allemande. -INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 or 6 persons.-6 to 8 pears, water, sugar, 2 oz. of butter, the yolk of an egg, 1/2 oz. of gelatine. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d.
Peel and cut the pears into any form that may be preferred, and steep them in cold water to prevent them turning black; put them into a saucepan with sufficient cold water to cover them, and boil them with the butter and enough sugar to sweeten them nicely, until tender; then brush the pears over with the yolk of an egg, sprinkle them with sifted sugar, and arrange them on a dish. Add the gelatine to the syrup, boil it up quickly for about 5 minutes, strain it over the pears, and let it remain until set. The syrup may be coloured with a little prepared cochineal, which would very much improve the appearance of the dish.
TIME. From 20 minutes to hour to stew the pears; 5 minutes to boil the syrup.
SEASONABLE from August to February.
Three fruit recipes run together here: a stewed peach compote, peaches put down in brandy, and pears set in a sweet gelatine glaze. The compote is the one that transfers to a modern kitchen almost unchanged.
- The syrupBeeton's "pint of syrup" points to a separate syrup recipe not reproduced on this page, so no proportions are given here; a British pint is 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups. Make it before the fruit goes anywhere near the pan.
- Quantity of fruitFifteen small peaches is about 2 1/2 lb, which is right for six as a dessert with a little syrup over each portion.
- PeelingShe pares the halves with a knife. Dipping whole peaches in boiling water for 30 seconds and slipping the skins off loses less flesh, and freestone varieties halve cleanly around the stone.
- The hinge: gentle stewingTen minutes at a bare simmer is a maximum, not a target. Ripe peaches can collapse in five; test with a skewer and lift them out the moment they yield, or the compote turns to purée in the dish.
- Reducing the syrupBoiling the drained syrup for two or three minutes concentrates the peach juice the fruit has given up. Cool it before pouring over, as hot syrup goes on cooking the fruit.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar, called for in the brandied peaches, was refined sugar sold in a cone and broken up as needed; ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the equivalent.
- Sealing the brandy jarsBladders and egg-white-brushed tissue paper were the Victorian answer to an airtight lid. Use proper screw-top preserving jars, keep the fruit fully submerged in spirit, and store cool and dark; the brandy, not the seal, is what preserves the fruit.
- The pears' raw egg glazeThe yolk brushed over the pears gets no cooking beyond the hot syrup strained over it, which cannot be relied on to make it safe. Either omit it and rely on the gelatine glaze for shine, or use pasteurised egg.
- Gelatine and cochinealThe printed page gives 1/2 oz. of gelatine, as our text now reads: about 4 to 5 teaspoons of powdered gelatine, or 6 to 7 leaves, enough to set a light syrup rather than a firm jelly. Prepared cochineal was a standard red colouring of the period; a little raspberry or redcurrant juice does the same job.
A compote is simply fruit poached in syrup and served in its own liquor, the word coming from the French for a mixture put together, and by Beeton's day it was the standard way to bring less-than-perfect fruit to the table when it was not handsome enough to pile up as dessert. That practical thrift is the point of the entry: peaches in mid-Victorian Britain were mostly wall-trained or glasshouse fruit from a walled garden, expensive and uneven, and the seasonal note of August and September marks the short home crop. The brandied peaches beside it belong to the older tradition of putting fruit down in spirit, which kept a taste of the season through the winter and doubled as a sweetmeat for the dessert course, while the pears a l'Allemande, glazed and coloured with cochineal, show the more theatrical side of the same book: fruit treated as confectionery, arranged for the look of the table as much as for eating.