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Peach Snow
One cup of cream; two eggs (whites); one cup of sugar; one quart of sliced peaches. Add half the sugar to the cream, stir until the sugar is dissolved, and then add the whites of the eggs beaten stiff. Place the sliced peaches in a dish, sprinkle them with the remainder of the sugar, pour on the cream mixture, and serve at once. The success of this depends upon its being thoroughly chilled when served. The cream, eggs and fruit should be placed on ice at least two hours before the dish is to be prepared, and the latter should be sent to the table as quickly as possible, the snow being kept in the ice-box until needed. Apple Snow may be made the same way.
FRESH FRUIT SALADS, No. I-Allow the following ingredients: One pineapple, finely chopped; one pint of strawberries; six bananas; six oranges and one lemon, thinly sliced; sugar to taste. Mix all together, add one wine glass of sherry or Madeira (if desired), and set on ice until very cold.
FRESH FRUIT SALADS, No. 2-Slice one dozen oranges, grate one fresh cocoanut, and mix sugar with it. Arrange in an ornamental dish alternate layers of oranges and cocoanut, and heap cocoanut on top.
FRESH FRUIT SALADS, No. 3-Peel and slice the required number of oranges, and arrange in a glass dish alternate layers of oranges and sugar until all the fruit is used. Whip some sweet cream very stiff, sweeten and flavor it to taste, and pour over the oranges. Shredded pineapple and sliced bananas may be added, if desired.
FRESH FRUIT SALADS, No. 4-Take one dozen sweet oranges; one dozen bananas; one pineapple; one cocoanut. With a sharp knife cut the oranges and pineapple into thick slices, then cut them into bits freed from seed and eyes. Thinly slice the bananas, and grate the cocoanut. Arrange layers of the different fruits in alternation, in a deep dish, sprinkle each layer with sugar; and over the whole pour the juices of the cocoanut, oranges and pineapple. CHARLOTTE RUSSE, No. 1- First line a number of molds, a bowl or other deep dish with a thin layer of cake. Thin sponge cake that has been divided when cold into two layers of equal thickness by means of a long sharp, knife, is considered most attractive; but halved lady-fingers, or pieces of any plain cake cut one-half an inch thick, may be used to line the dish or molds. Charlottes are made with and without tops, according to taste or convenience; and when the supply of cake is limited stiff paper may be buttered and laid in the bottom of each mold, cake being placed only at the sides. Whatever cake is cut away in trimming the forms to shape may be crumbled or sprinkled over the bottom. Fill the forms with whipped cream seasoned with four teaspoons of fine sugar and one teaspoon of any prepared extract or three tablespoons of sherry. To make sure that the whipped cream is sufficiently stiff stir into it lightly but thoroughly with a spoon the stiffly beaten whites of two eggs to each pint of cream. Arrange the top of the forms neatly or cover them with a layer of cake and set the charlottes on ice.
CHARLOTTE RUSSE, No. 2-Make the recipe for Velvet Cream, place in individual molds and trim with cut lady-fingers.
Peach Snow is a two-minute assembly dessert built on raw egg white folded into sweetened cream, and that is exactly where it runs into modern food-safety practice. The notes below cover the problem and then the archaic measures on the rest of the page.
- Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites are beaten stiff and folded into cold cream, and the dish goes straight to the table. Nothing in the method brings the eggs anywhere near the temperature at which Salmonella is killed. A current recipe, worked out for pasteurized or cooked-base preparations, should be used instead.
- Cream, then and nowCream in a household dish like this would often have been unpasteurized, and keeping it on ice would have kept it from souring. Refrigeration solves the souring problem but not the egg problem.
- Why the book hurriesEgg-white foam folded into unwhipped cream begins to weep within minutes. The instruction to keep the "snow" in the ice-box and send the dish to the table "as quickly as possible" is about texture, not safety, and it tells you the mixture was never meant to sit.
- A quart of sliced peachesFruit was measured by volume, not weight. A quart of sliced peaches is roughly 4 cups, which comes from about 1.5 to 2 lb of whole fruit, or four to six medium peaches.
- A wine glass of sherryIn the fruit salad that follows, a wine glass is a standard old measure of about 2 fluid ounces, or a quarter cup. It is not the capacity of a modern stemmed glass.
- Grated cocoanutThe salads assume a whole fresh coconut, cracked, drained and grated on a hand grater; the reserved coconut water is what gets poured over the fruit in No. 4. Desiccated sweetened coconut from a bag is a different ingredient and will make those layers cloyingly sweet against the sugar already called for.
- "Any prepared extract"In the Charlotte Russe, this means a bottled flavoring essence: vanilla, lemon, almond, rose. One teaspoon of a modern vanilla extract is the direct equivalent.
- The fruit salads are soundNos. 1 through 4 involve nothing but fruit, coconut, sugar, cream and, optionally, fortified wine, and can be made as written. None of them contains egg.
"Snow" was a standing name in English and American cookery for a dessert lightened with beaten egg white, and apple snow — which this recipe offers as a variation almost in passing — was among the oldest and best known of them, appearing in English receipt books well before the nineteenth century. This version depends on ice: the insistence that everything be "placed on ice at least two hours before" and that the dish be "sent to the table as quickly as possible" is the voice of a kitchen equipped with an ice-box and an ice delivery, a domestic arrangement then a few decades old in American cities. The section around it is telling too. Cold desserts built from raw fruit, sugar and cream — the four fresh fruit salads, the charlottes — suited a late-Victorian taste for shipped produce: pineapples, bananas and whole coconuts appear here as ordinary grocery items.