Stewed Peaches
Pare and quarter the peaches, discarding the stones. Bring to the boiling point one cup of sugar and one cup of water; cook the boiling point one cup of sugar and one cup of water; cook four minutes; add the peaches and cook until tender.
Pears, plums and apricots may be cooked in the same way, though the plums may require more sugar.
A plain sugar-syrup poach, and the whole of it hangs on the syrup being ready before the fruit goes in. The original text repeats a line through a typesetting slip; read it as one instruction, not two.
- The syrup ratioEqual parts sugar and water, one cup each, boiled four minutes, gives a light syrup that holds its body without candying. The recipe names no quantity of peaches; that much syrup would suit roughly a couple of pounds of fruit.
- PeelingParing firm peaches with a knife wastes flesh. Score the skins, dip 30-45 seconds in boiling water and slip them off, then quarter. Very ripe fruit needs no blanching at all.
- "Cook until tender"For quartered freestone peaches at eating ripeness this is 5-8 minutes at a bare simmer, longer for hard fruit. A hard boil breaks the quarters into sauce; keep the surface barely moving and turn the fruit rather than stirring it.
- The other fruitsPears want longer, 10-20 minutes depending on variety and ripeness. Apricots halved cook in about 5. Plums, as the recipe says, take more sugar; add another quarter to half cup for tart varieties, and expect the skins to split and colour the syrup.
- KeepingCool the fruit in its syrup, which continues to sweeten it through. Refrigerated in a covered jar it keeps about a week. This is not a canning recipe and gives no processing instructions, so do not seal it for the pantry.
- ServingGood warm with cream, cold with a plain cake, or drained and used to fill a tart, with the syrup reduced for a glaze.
Poaching fruit in a light sugar syrup is a simple way of using a glut of orchard fruit for a few days without a canning kettle. The note that plums may require more sugar is the practical heart of it, and points to a period when home cooks worked with whatever varieties the local trees produced rather than the uniformly sweet commercial fruit of today.