Peach Betty
6 large peaches
½ cup fine bread- or cake- 4 tablespoons butter
⅔ cup raspberry-juice
2 tablespoons sugar crums
Cut the peaches in halves, removing the stones. Place the halves in a baking-dish, hollow side up, and put one teaspoon butter or over the butter substitute in each half. Pour half of the fruit-juice over the peaches; sprinkle with crums and sugar, arrange the second layer juice. Serve and bake, basting occasionally with the remaining juice. Serve the peaches in the hot baking-dish.
The text has come through the scanner scrambled, but the method is recoverable: buttered peach halves layered with crumbs and raspberry juice, baked and basted. A few things need pinning down.
- The scrambled lineThe garbled sentence appears to mean: arrange a second layer of peach halves on top, butter and sugar them as before, and sprinkle with the remaining crumbs. Bake, basting occasionally with the juice held back.
- Butter arithmeticSix peaches give twelve halves, one teaspoon of butter in each — exactly the four tablespoons listed. The quantities are internally consistent, which is a good sign the ingredient list survived intact even where the method did not.
- Oven temperatureNone is given, and the recipe uses no oven-heat term at all. A modern cook might try a moderate oven, around 350F, for roughly 30 to 40 minutes, until the peaches are tender and the crumb topping browned.
- Raspberry juiceIn 1900s practice this meant juice pressed and strained from fresh or preserved raspberries, unsweetened or lightly so. Bottled raspberry juice or a thin, strained raspberry purée thinned with water gives the same effect; commercial raspberry cordials and syrups are far sweeter and will overwhelm the two tablespoons of sugar.
- "Butter substitute"The phrase probably points to oleomargarine, which was widely available and often recommended on grounds of cost in books of this period. Butter is the better choice here, since it browns the crumbs.
- CrumbsFine, dry bread or cake crumbs, not fresh soft ones — fresh crumbs turn to paste under the juice. Stale sponge or pound cake crumbs give a sweeter, richer top than bread.
- PeachesFreestone varieties halve and stone cleanly; clingstones will not. If the skins are tough, blanch the peaches 30 seconds and slip them off before halving, though the recipe does not require peeling.
- Basting mattersThe juice is the only liquid, and the dish is shallow and open, so baste often — the recipe says occasionally — to keep the exposed crumbs from scorching before the fruit softens.
- YieldSix servings of two halves each, served hot in the baking dish as directed.
A "Betty" is an American baked pudding of fruit layered with buttered crumbs, the best-known version being apple brown betty, which appears in printed household writing from the middle of the nineteenth century onward; the origin of the name itself is not documented and the various explanations offered for it are guesswork. The form was economical by design — it used up stale bread or cake and needed no pastry, no eggs and very little sugar, which is why it turns up so consistently in books aimed at the ordinary household rather than the professional kitchen. Butterick, the dress-pattern company, published cookery and housekeeping volumes as part of a broader domestic-advice business built around its magazines, and the recipes reflect that audience: seasonal fruit, small quantities, and a straight-faced acceptance of butter substitutes.