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Peach Cobbler
1 quart peaches 1 cup water 1 1/2 cups sugar 1/3 cup milk 1⅓ cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 eggs Wash and pare the peaches; cut them in halves and cook with one cup of sugar and the water until the peaches are tender.
Empty into a baking dish, reserving one half cup of syrup . Sift the flour, salt and baking powder; add theremaining sugar and eggs, , and mix thoroughly with the milk and the remaining syrup. Pour the batter over the peaches and bake in a moderate oven for one half hour. Serve hot, with or without sauce.
A batter cobbler rather than a pastry one: sweetened peaches are stewed first, then a soft baking-powder batter is poured over and baked into a cake-like lid. The ingredient list as printed is incomplete, so a few quantities have to be judged.
- Flour quantityThe figure printed as "11/3 cups" is almost certainly 1 1/3 cups, which is the right proportion for 2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon salt. That gives a thick pourable batter.
- Missing amountsNo quantity is given for peaches, water, milk, or the total sugar. For a 2-quart baking dish, work from about 8 medium peaches, 1/4 cup water for the stewing, and roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup milk for the batter; the recipe calls for one cup of sugar in the fruit plus "the remaining sugar" in the batter, an amount the printed list omits -- about half a cup suits the batter.
- Moderate oven"Moderate" is usually read as somewhere around 350-375F. Half an hour is right for a batter of this depth, but test the topping with a skewer at the centre, where the fruit steam slows setting.
- The reserved syrupThe half cup held back appears to be "the remaining syrup" that goes into the batter, not over the fruit, so measure it out before you tip the fruit into the dish.
- Cooking the peaches"Until tender" means just yielding to a knife tip, five to eight minutes for ripe fruit. Peaches that are already soft need only to be heated through with the sugar, or they collapse to jam under the batter.
- PeelingTo pare quickly, score an X in the base and drop the peaches into boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then into cold water; the skins slip off. Firm or underripe fruit is better peeled with a knife.
- SauceThe recipe leaves the sauce open: thin custard or cream to pour, or a hard sauce to melt into the hot topping. Serve straight from the dish; it will not cut cleanly.
- YieldSix to eight servings from a 2-quart dish.
Peaches were a classic cobbler filling because the fruit was abundant and cheap in season and did not keep long fresh, which is also why books of this period often sit peach cobbler beside peach pickle, peach preserve and peach leather. The name "cobbler" is of uncertain origin; it is often linked to the cobbled, uneven look of a dropped-dough crust, but this is traditional explanation rather than settled etymology.