Peach Crusts
Roll puff-paste one-eighth of an inch thick; cut in two-and-ahalf-inch squares and bake in a hot oven. Cool; press down the centers and place in each a half of a canned peach, drained from its syrup. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and squeeze a little lemon juice into each cavity.
Planned for
A quick assembly dessert that lives or dies on the pastry: thin puff paste baked hard and dry, then filled cold. Nothing is cooked after the fruit goes on.
- "Hot oven"425–450°F. Puff paste needs that heat to convert its water to steam quickly and lift the layers; a moderate oven melts the butter out and gives you a greasy, flat biscuit.
- Puff pasteThis would have been made at home. All-butter frozen puff pastry, thawed in the refrigerator, is a fair substitute. Roll it to a true one-eighth inch — thicker squares rise too tall to press down neatly.
- Cut cleanUse a sharp knife or a wheel and press straight down without dragging. A smeared edge seals the layers together and the square will rise lopsided.
- Docking and the pressed centerThe pressed center -- The recipe presses the centers down after the squares have cooled. Pressing once about halfway through the bake, while the pastry is still pliable, will keep the rim higher and the well better defined.
- Canned peachesDrain the halves well and blot them dry, cut side down, on a towel. Syrup left clinging will soften the pastry within minutes. Peaches canned in juice rather than heavy syrup suit the lemon better.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this could mean finely ground sugar rather than exactly the modern confectioners' grade; either works here. The recipe does not say whether to sugar the fruit or the whole crust, and the lemon juice squeezed into the cavity will dissolve part of it.
- Yield and timingA standard sheet of puff pastry gives roughly a dozen two-and-a-half-inch squares. Bake until deep gold and dry through — at this thickness that is likely 10-15 minutes — cool completely, and fill shortly before serving; they do not hold.
- The trailing "Planned for"Not part of the method. It appears to be a fragment of the page's printed format, left stranded at the end of the recipe text.
The reliance on canned peaches is the telling detail: by the early twentieth century, commercially canned California cling peaches in syrup were cheap, uniform, and available year-round, and cookbooks of the period lean on them heavily for out-of-season fruit desserts. The loose-leaf format itself is often said to reflect a broader push in American domestic-science publishing to make recipes modular — something one could sort, file, and plan menus from, rather than hunting through a bound volume.