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Compote of Peaches with Rice
Split nine peaches into halves, take out their stones and plunge the peaches into boiling water to loosen their skins; drain, peel, put the peaches in a basin and cover them with syrup at 30 degrees. Wash one-half pound of rice, blanch it for eight or nine minutes, then drain and refresh it; put it in a stewpan with sufficient warm milk to cover, adding more milk as it evaporates. When the rice is nearly cooked put it in together with a stick of vanilla cut in pieces, and two heaped tablespoonfuls of granulated sugar. Take the saucepan off the fire and keep it covered for ten minutes. Butter a border-mould, mix three tablespoonfuls of butter with the rice, and put it in the mould pressing it well down. Keep the rice warm for ten minutes, then turn it out of the mould onto a dish, fill the center with the halves of the peaches building them in a pyramid shape. Reduce some of the syrup with a little apple-juice and pour it over them. Blanch and peel some sweet almonds, split them into halves, stick one on each peach, and serve with the remainder of the syrup mixed with a little maraschino in a sauceboat.
A late-Victorian hotel dessert: a warm ring of vanilla milk rice turned out and filled with poached peach halves. Most of the difficulty is in the vocabulary rather than the technique.
- Syrup at 30 degreesThis is degrees Baumé, read with a saccharometer, not Fahrenheit or Celsius. A 30°B syrup is a heavy one — roughly 1,350 g sugar dissolved in 1 litre of water, brought to a boil and cooled. The recipe does not say at what temperature the syrup goes over the peeled halves; pouring it hot and letting them cool in it will soften them gently, but that is an inference, not the text.
- Border-mouldA ring mould, about 1 to 1.5 quarts. Butter it generously; the rice will not unmould cleanly from a dry surface. A plain savarin or angel-food ring pan works.
- Blanch and refresh the riceBoil the washed rice in plenty of water for eight or nine minutes, drain, then rinse under cold water to stop the cooking and wash off loose starch. Use a short or medium grain — the recipe depends on the grains binding when pressed into the mould.
- A garbled line"When the rice is nearly cooked put it in together with a stick of vanilla" reads as garbled, whether through the printer or the original wording. What seems to be meant is that the vanilla and the sugar go in at that point; keep the milk at a bare simmer and top it up as it absorbs — on the order of 25 to 30 minutes in all.
- VanillaA stick of vanilla means a whole bean, split and cut up. Fish the pieces out before moulding, or scrape the seeds into the rice and discard the pod. Two teaspoons of extract stirred in off the heat is the substitute, added at the end so it does not cook off.
- Sweet almondsOrdinary blanched almonds. The distinction from bitter almonds mattered in 1896, when both were sold; only the sweet kind belongs here. Drop them in boiling water for a minute, slip off the skins, and split each along its natural seam.
- Apple-juiceFresh apple juice, or the strained liquid from cooked apples, reduced into the syrup; it adds acid and a little body so the syrup coats. Unsweetened cider or bottled apple juice does the same job; reduce with the syrup until lightly syrupy, not caramelised.
- MaraschinoThe clear cherry liqueur, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cherries. A tablespoon or two in the reserved syrup is enough. Kirsch is the usual stand-in.
- Yield and timingEighteen peach halves and a half pound of rice serve eight to ten. Both components must be ready together: the rice will not sit long without stiffening, so have the peaches drained and the sauce reduced before you unmould.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms rather than its stoves, but his 1896 book records the French repertoire that hotel kitchens in New York worked from, and this dish is a straight piece of that repertoire — a *riz à l'impératrice* family construction, milk rice moulded in a border and filled with fruit, of the kind Escoffier would codify a few years later under dozens of fruit names. The specification of syrup "at 30 degrees" points to a professional pastry section: Baumé readings assume a saccharometer in the drawer and a stock syrup on the range, though such scales do also turn up in nineteenth-century domestic confectionery and preserving manuals. Peaches in heavy syrup were also a seasonal luxury made to last, and the border of rice is the frugal half of the plate, stretching the fruit further.