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Delaware Peach Meringue
Line two suitable shallow pudding-pans with pie paste and fill in three inches deep with halves of ripe peeled peaches. Strew over them about 1/2 pound of white sugar to each pan (or half the weight of the peaches in sugar) and 1/4 pound of best butter. Grate a little nutmeg over. Bake in a slow oven about half an hour, with paper over if in danger of blackening the fruit. There should be a thick, rich syrup of the peach juice and sugar in the pins and the fruit transparent. Spread meringue over while still in the oven, and dry-bake that to a light fawn color. Serve either hot or cold Not only in Delaware but in Maryland Virginia, Tennessee, and we know not how many peach growing states beside, the kind of pie to be next described is called peach cobbler. Perhaps it would be as good by some other name, but being such a good medium for disposing of too plentiful fruit its familiar name that it can be readily called by had best not be tampered with The French name is D'Artois--D'Artois of peaches or cherries, etc, or D'Artois cake. There is a province of Artois in France which possibly may be as great a peach country as little Delaware. But the probability is that D'Artois of fruit gained its name from a Count D'Artois, who, they do say, was some akin to Marie Antoinette. The English would scorn to call a peach cobbler anything but a peach pie, but as they cannot grow millions of baskets of peaches--only a few on a warm south wall--they are not good authority on the subject. Like apple and peach charlottes, cobblers are good either in place of pudding or as sweet entrees.
A deep peach tart under a meringue lid, written for a bakeshop where two pans at a time was a small order. The measurements are generous by modern standards and the oven direction is the part that matters.
- "Slow oven"Read this as 300-325F. The point is to stew the peaches in their own juice until they turn translucent rather than to brown the pastry quickly, which is also why the recipe suggests laying paper over the top.
- Shallow pudding-pansAny straight-sided baking dish of about 9 inches and at least 3 inches deep will do. Filling "three inches deep" with fruit assumes a deeper pan than most pie plates; expect to bake longer than half an hour if you pile the peaches that high.
- Sugar quantityHalf the weight of the peaches in sugar is a preserving ratio, not a dessert one. A pound of peeled peaches to 4-6 oz sugar gives a syrup that still tastes of fruit, and the syrup will be looser, which is worth knowing before you cut it.
- ButterA quarter pound per pan is a full stick, dotted over the fruit. It emulsifies into the peach syrup as it bakes. Reducing it to 2 oz changes the texture of the juice more than the flavour.
- The typo"There should be a thick, rich syrup... in the pins" is a compositor's error for pans. The sentence describes the visual test for doneness: transparent fruit sitting in reduced syrup, not raw juice.
- The meringueSpread it on while the filling is hot so the underside sets rather than weeping. "Dry-bake to a light fawn color" means a long stay at low heat, 20-30 minutes at 300F, not a quick blast under a broiler, which would colour the peaks and leave the interior slack.
- PeachesSkins slip off easily after 30 seconds in boiling water and a cold plunge. Freestone varieties matter here because the recipe wants halves; clingstones will not part cleanly from the pit.
- YieldEach pan serves six to eight. The recipe as printed makes two, which is how a pastry cook thought; halve everything for a household.
The American Pastry Cook was written by Jessup Whitehead for professional bakers and hotel kitchens in the late nineteenth century, which is why the recipe assumes two pans and quarter-pounds of butter as a matter of course. The digression that follows the method is doing real work: it records that cobbler was the ordinary American word for the kind of deep fruit pie described next across the peach-growing states, and that the trade name in a French-influenced kitchen was d'Artois. That French term properly describes a puff-pastry case filled with fruit or frangipane; Whitehead's suggestion that it derives from the Comte d'Artois, the younger brother of Louis XVI and later Charles X, is a traditional attribution rather than a documented one, and the province of Artois is the likelier source. The jab at English peaches grown "on a warm south wall" is fair enough for the period. Commercial peach growing in Delaware and along the Chesapeake boomed after the railroads reached the orchards, and gluts of ripe fruit that could not be shipped were exactly what recipes like this one existed to absorb.