Peach Flan
Said to have been for a few years a specialty, in the peach season, at a large hotel at Put-in-Bay, since burned down.
Cover a shallow baking-pan with bottom crust of good pie paste, nearly cover that with quartered peaches--in the same style as bakers' apple cake--then fill up with custard made the same as for custard pie and bake slowly. Cut in squares when done and serve instead of pudding. It is necessary to place the pan in the oven before filling and add the custard by means of a long handled dipper. When they are soft, ripe peaches they need no previous cooking, but if hard must be stewed first
A baker's sheet-pan custard tart, written for someone who already knows how to make pie paste and custard pie filling. The instructions assume both, so here are the numbers the original leaves out.
- The hinge: fill the pan in the ovenThe original is emphatic about this, and it is the whole trick. A shallow pan of liquid custard cannot be carried to the oven without slopping over the rim and under the crust. Slide the lined, peach-filled pan onto the rack first, then ladle the custard in with a long-handled cup or a heatproof pitcher.
- Pan and quantityA quarter sheet pan (about 9 by 13 inches) with a rimmed pie-paste lining takes roughly 1 lb of pastry, 6 to 8 peaches, and a custard of 4 eggs, 2 cups milk or half-and-half, and 1/2 cup sugar. Fill only to just below the crust edge.
- "Bake slowly"The original gives no temperature. In period terms this means a slow to moderate oven; for a baked custard something around 325F answers well. Push the heat much higher and the eggs curdle and weep, giving a watery layer under a grainy top.
- DonenessThe custard is set when the outer two inches are firm and the center still shivers as a single mass when the pan is nudged. It finishes setting as it cools. Chill before cutting or the squares will not hold their edges.
- Soggy bottomBakery deck ovens of the period gave strong bottom heat from a masonry floor. The original assumes an unbaked shell, filled once the pan is on the rack; in a domestic oven you may prefer instead to blind-bake the crust 12 to 15 minutes at 400F, cool it, then assemble and drop to the lower heat.
- The peachesSoft ripe fruit goes in raw, as written. Hard peaches should be poached in a light syrup until just tender and thoroughly drained, otherwise they release juice into the custard as it sets. Skins slip off easily after 30 seconds in boiling water.
- "Bakers' apple cake" styleThe comparison points to the trade habit of packing cut fruit closely over the pastry, which is what the original's "nearly cover" implies; the precise arrangement is not specified. It is a packing instruction, not a separate recipe.
- Yield and servingA quarter sheet cuts into roughly 12 generous squares. The original directs that it be cut in squares and served "instead of pudding" -- that is, as the dessert itself rather than as a slice of pie; it gives no guidance on serving temperature.
Put-in-Bay, on South Bass Island in Lake Erie, was a busy summer resort in the late nineteenth century, served by steamers out of Toledo, Sandusky and Detroit and equipped with enormous frame hotels of the kind that burned down with grim regularity. The Lake Erie islands were also fruit country, best known for grapes, with orchard fruit grown on the islands and along the nearby lake shore, so a hotel pastry cook there would have had ripe local fruit in quantity for a few weeks each year, which is the situation this recipe answers: a sheet-pan dessert that turns a glut into portions with one baking. The word flan here carries its older English and French sense of an open tart baked in a shallow pan, not the Spanish caramel custard most readers now picture. The recipe reads as trade shorthand addressed to someone working a hotel or bakery oven, which would explain why it gives no weights but does give the one piece of practical advice a professional would want: get the pan into the oven before you add the liquid.