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Ring Puffs With Peaches
Make the rings as in the preceeding case. Instead of splitting and spreading, place them in dishes or saucers and half a peach on top of each, the syrup to be poured under. The peach halves, if the entremet is to be served hot for dinner, should be baked for the purpose, with sugar and butter, or else stewed in syrup. If to be served cold, preserved or brandy peaches can be used.
This is an assembly note rather than a standalone recipe: it depends entirely on the ring puffs made in the preceding entry, and on peaches prepared one of four ways depending on whether the dish goes out hot or cold. A few points make it workable on its own.
- The rings come from the previous recipe"ring puffs" in books of this period usually means choux paste piped into circles and baked hollow, the same paste as cream puffs, though puff-paste rings are also possible and this page does not say which. If you are working from this page alone, pipe 3-inch rings of pate a choux and bake at about 425F for 15 minutes, then drop to 350F for another 20-25 until they are dry and firm; the book gives no temperatures. A soft ring collapses under the fruit.
- EntremetHere it means a sweet course served after the roast, not a savoury side. The instruction to serve it in "dishes or saucers" tells you the syrup is meant to pool, so use something with a rim rather than a flat plate.
- Baked peachesHalve and stone freestone peaches, set them cut side up with a spoonful of sugar and a small knob of butter in each hollow, and bake at 375F for 20-30 minutes until tender but still holding shape. The buttery syrup that gathers in the dish is what gets poured under the ring.
- Stewed in syrupA syrup of equal parts sugar and water by volume, simmered until the sugar dissolves, then the peach halves poached in it for 8-12 minutes. Skins slip off more easily if the peaches are blanched briefly first.
- Brandy peachesA common nineteenth-century store cupboard item: peaches put up in sugar syrup with brandy. They are harder to find now, but jarred peaches in syrup with a spoonful of brandy stirred through the syrup give the same effect for the cold version.
- Assemble lateChoux goes soft fast once syrup touches it. Set the rings out, fill and pour at the moment of service; a ring that has sat in syrup for twenty minutes is a wet sponge.
- YieldOne ring and one peach half per person. A standard batch of choux paste — about 1 cup water, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup flour, 4 eggs — gives roughly 10 to 12 rings of this size, so plan on 5 or 6 peaches.
Jessup Whitehead wrote for working cooks in American hotels and restaurants, where the same base preparation was expected to yield a dozen different menu items, and this entry is a clear example of that economy: having taught the ring puff once, he simply lists what else can be done with it. The four-way treatment of the peaches reflects a kitchen that had to serve fruit year-round from a cellar of put-up jars, brandy peaches being one of the commonest home and commercial preserves of the period. The instruction to pour the syrup underneath rather than over is a practical one and still the right call. Read next The American Pastry Cook Eight-Egg Sponge Cake Gelatine Blanc Mange Sago Puddings. Sago Cakes ← Ring Puffs With Jelly Bell