Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Peach Pudding
Peach Pudding
Peel twelve ripe peaches and cut them in pieces, put them in a basin, sprinkle fine sugar over and let them stand for an hour. Put one and one-half pints of milk in a double boiler. Before preparing the peaches put one ounce of gelatine or isinglass in a teacupful of milk and let it soak for an hour. Stir four beaten eggs with two tablespoonfuls of finely-powdered sugar and the gelatine in the milk when boiling, and continue stirring for four or five minutes. Take the double boiler off the fire and mix with the custard a little salt and one wineglassful of Madeira. Put the peaches in a glass dish, and when the custard has partly cooled pour it over and leave them for a few hours before serving. It is better, if possible, to make this pudding the preceding day.
A stirred custard set with gelatine and poured over macerated peaches — closer to what we would now call a peach trifle or a soft-set cream than a baked pudding. Two things need attention: the gelatine quantity and the temperature of the custard.
- The gelatine is the hingeOne ounce of sheet gelatine or isinglass in the 1890s was likely weaker and less consistently graded than modern powdered gelatine. An ounce of today's powder (about four 1/4-oz envelopes, 28 g) in this volume of liquid will give a rubbery, sliceable block rather than a spoonable cream. Two envelopes is nearer the intended texture for the roughly 4 cups of liquid here.
- IsinglassMade from the dried swim bladders of sturgeon, it was the fine-quality setting agent of the period and is now essentially unobtainable outside brewing supply. Plain unflavoured gelatine is the direct substitute.
- MeasuresOne and a half pints of milk is 3 cups; a teacupful is about 3/4 cup; a wineglassful is 2 fl oz, roughly 1/4 cup. Twelve ripe peaches is about 3 lb, or 2 1/2 lb once peeled and stoned.
- Custard temperature"Stir for four or five minutes" is a guide, not a rule. Cook until the custard coats the back of a spoon and reaches 175-180F. Above about 185F it will curdle, and a double boiler makes this slow enough to catch.
- Dissolve, do not boil, the gelatineThe soaked gelatine goes into hot milk and needs only to melt clear. Prolonged boiling weakens its setting power, and here it is being held at the same time as eggs that must not scramble.
- The Madeira goes in off the heatAs written, and for good reason — the wine is there for aroma, which simmering drives off. A medium Madeira such as Bual or Verdelho suits it; a dry Sercial will read as thin against the sugared peaches.
- PeachesThe hour of sugaring draws out juice that will thin the custard where they touch. Drain the peaches before assembling if you want a clean set, or leave the syrup in and accept a looser, more sauce-like pudding.
- Setting and yieldOvernight is genuinely better, as the note says — gelatine continues to firm for 12 hours or more. Serves 8 to 10 in a large glass bowl.
Oscar Tschirky was never formally the Waldorf's chef — he was its maître d'hôtel — but his 1896 collection gathered the hotel's repertoire at the moment American grand-hotel cooking was defining itself against French models. This pudding is a fair sample of that repertoire: a French crème anglaise, set with gelatine in the English fashion, poured over fresh American peaches and lifted with Madeira, the fortified wine that had been a fixture of East Coast entertaining since the colonial trade. Gelatine desserts were fashionable rather than humble in this period, and the instruction to make this one the day before appears without apology.