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Peach Flawn
Put eight not very ripe peaches in boiling water to loosen their skins, then drain and peel them; cut them into halves, remove the stones, and put them into a flat stewpan. Mix some kirsch with syrup and pour it over the peaches. Peel and take out the stones of five or six small peaches, chop them and put them in a stewpan with a little more than one-half tumbler full of syrup; stir it over the fire till boiling, adding gradually a little potato flour. When thick pass it through a fine hair-sieve, add a wineglassful of kirsch and a stick of vanilla, and keep it hot in the bain-marie. Butter a flawn-mould, line it with short paste, put a buttered paper round, and bake it in a slack oven; when done, take the buttered paper out, spread some apricot marmalade all round the inside of the paste, take it out of the mould and stand it on a dish. Warm the peaches gradually, but do not boil them. Drain, and pile them inside the crust, brush them over with a paste-brush dipped in peach marmalade, arrange some preserved fruits of various colors over them, mix together in equal quantities some kirsch and syrup, and pour it over them. Put the peach puree in a sauceboat, and serve it with the peaches.
A blind-baked pastry case filled with poached peach halves and served with a thickened peach puree. The vocabulary is nineteenth-century French-by-way-of-London, but the technique is straightforward once the terms are translated.
- The hinge: never boil the peachesThe halves are warmed through in the kirsch syrup only, so they hold their shape when piled in the crust. Bring them to a bare steam over low heat; a simmer collapses them into compote and the whole point of the dish is that they stand up.
- "Flawn" is a flanAn older English spelling of the same word. The flawn-mould is a straight-sided tart ring or hoop set on a baking sheet; a fluted tart tin with a removable base does the job. The recipe gives no size, but it must hold eight halved peaches.
- Slack ovenAround 300-325F on the usual reckoning of the term. That is low for a case that should dry out and colour evenly rather than puff. The buttered paper put "round" the mould is most likely the lining paper for the blind bake, though the text does not say so outright.
- SyrupPlain sugar syrup; a heavy one, roughly equal weights of sugar and water, boiled and cooled, suits the dish. The recipe assumes the cook already has it to hand.
- Tumbler and wineglassA tumbler is about 8 fl oz, so "a little more than one-half tumbler" is around 5 fl oz. A wineglassful in this period is 2 fl oz, not the modern pour.
- Potato flourPotato starch. Add it slaked in a spoonful of cold syrup, a little at a time, or it will lump. A couple of teaspoons will thicken 5 oz of syrup to a coating sauce; it sets glossy and clear, unlike cornflour.
- Hair-sieve and bain-marieAny fine mesh sieve will do; press the pulp through with a ladle. The bain-marie is a bowl over barely simmering water, holding the puree warm without a skin forming.
- Marmalade means jamApricot and peach "marmalade" here are the smooth preserves used as glaze, not citrus marmalade. Warm and sieve them before brushing so the coat is thin and even.
- Preserved fruitsCandied cherries, angelica, citron and the like — the coloured glacé fruit of a nineteenth-century pastry room, used for pattern rather than flavour. Omit them and the dish loses nothing but its period look.
- YieldEight halved peaches in one case serves eight, cut in wedges, with the sauce handed separately.
This entry reads like a translation from a French professional manual: the flawn-mould, the bain-marie, the hair-sieve and the potato flour liaison all belong to that vocabulary. The word flawn is the old English form of French flan, itself generally traced back through Old French to a Frankish word for a flat cake. Kirsch with peaches was a common pairing, cherry and stone-fruit kernels sharing the same almond note, and using a second batch of small peaches for the sauce is a kitchen economy: the handsome fruit goes in the crust, the small ones go through the sieve.