Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Peach Sponge
Peach Sponge
Strain the juice from a can of preserved peaches and pass the fruit through a fine hair-sieve, then beat it up with the juice and a small quantity of sugar. Put one ounce of isinglass in a basin with one-half pint of cream, let it steep for some time, then stand the basin in a stewpan containing boiling water, and stir the contents until the isinglass has dissolved. Mix the fruit pulp with the cream and stir it, out of the water, until nearly cold. Whisk the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth, stir them in with the cream, and pile it up high in the center of a glass dish. Select several small thickly-berried sprays of holly and brush each leaf carefully over with a strong solution of gum arabic, strew powdered sugar over and leave them until dry. Arrange the sprays of holly round the sponge, and serve.
Two things in this recipe put it out of bounds: the egg whites are never cooked, and the garnish is a toxic plant dressed up to look like candy. The archaic terms are worth knowing all the same.
- The raw egg whitesThree whisked whites are folded into a cold gelatine cream and served without any heating step. The isinglass is dissolved over a water bath before the whites go in, so nothing in the finished sponge ever reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella. In 1896 that was normal practice; today a cold-set mousse of this kind should follow a current recipe using pasteurised whites or a cooked meringue.
- The hollyHolly leaves and berries are not food. The berries in particular contain saponins that cause vomiting and diarrhoea, and here the leaves of thickly-berried sprays are brushed with gum arabic and strewn with powdered sugar, so a berried, sugar-frosted spray sits on the dish looking much like a sweet — a hazard at a table with children. Garnishes of this kind appear to have been set around the dish for show rather than eaten, but there is no reason to reproduce it.
- IsinglassA gelatine made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in leaf or shred form and steeped before dissolving. One ounce to half a pint of cream is a lot; isinglass varied in strength batch to batch, so an ounce-for-ounce swap with modern powdered gelatine is unlikely to give the same set and would probably be too firm.
- Gum arabicAcacia gum, still sold for confectionery and cake decorating. It is edible in itself; the problem is what it is being used to coat here.
- Vessels and measuresA stewpan of boiling water with a basin standing in it is a bain-marie. A hair sieve was a fine sieve of woven horsehair, the period's equivalent of a drum sieve or a food mill. Half a pint of cream is one cup in US measure.
- "Preserved peaches"Canned peaches, which in this period would normally have been packed in a sweet syrup; that may be why only "a small quantity of sugar" is called for. Modern peaches packed in juice or light syrup are less sweet, so taste before adding.
A "sponge" in late-nineteenth-century American and British cookery meant a cold gelatine dessert lightened with whisked egg white until it held a spongy, aerated texture — a family that included lemon sponge, coffee sponge and the fruit versions, related to the fruit fool and to the charlotte russe. They relied on isinglass, the fish-derived setting agent long used in fine cookery alongside the commercial packaged gelatines that were becoming common by the end of the century, and on canned fruit that let a chef produce a peach dish in December. The holly garnish suggests the Christmas table: sugared and gummed leaves, frosted grapes and spun-sugar work belonged to a tradition of centrepieces meant to be admired rather than eaten. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, compiled his 1896 Cook Book as a reference of some nine hundred pages, and dishes like this one show the hotel dining room's taste for a dessert that arrived at the table piled high and framed like a display piece.