Home › Fruits › Mock Strawberries
Mock Strawberries
Cut ripe peaches and choice well-flavored apples, in proportion of three peaches to one apple, into quarters about the size of a strawberry, place in alternate layers, sprinkle the top thickly with sugar, and add pounded ice; let stand about two hours, mix peaches and apples thoroughly, let stand an hour longer, and serve. -Miss C. B., Newburyport, Mass.
A macerated fruit salad that trades on texture rather than any real resemblance to strawberries. The whole thing depends on the fruit, so buy for ripeness and aroma, not looks.
- The proportionThe original gives three peaches to one apple by count; if your fruit varies a lot in size, judging by volume gets you closer to the intent. The apple is there for firmness and tartness; it should never dominate.
- Cut size"About the size of a strawberry" means roughly 1-inch pieces. Larger and the sugar cannot draw enough juice; smaller and the peach collapses into pulp during the three hours of standing.
- PeachesFreestone peaches at the point of yielding to a thumb are what this needs. Peel them if the skins are tough; a 30-second dip in boiling water and a plunge into cold slips them off cleanly.
- Choice of apple"Choice well-flavored" suggests something aromatic and sharp rather than merely sweet, though the recipe says no more than that. A Gravenstein or Cox works, as does a modern variety such as Braeburn; a mealy Red Delicious will read as filler.
- Pounded iceIce was what the period had for chilling. Serve the dish over crushed ice in a bowl or set the bowl in ice, rather than mixing ice through the fruit, which waters down the syrup as it melts. Three hours in the refrigerator does the same job.
- SugarNo quantity is given. Two to three tablespoons per pound of prepared fruit is enough to pull a syrup without turning it into candy; taste at the two-hour mark, before the final mixing, and adjust.
- BrowningThe cut apple will oxidize over three hours. A squeeze of lemon tossed with the apple pieces holds the color and sharpens the peaches at the same time, though the original does not call for it.
- YieldSix good peaches and two apples give about six servings. Serve in glass, with cream alongside if you like.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks are full of "mock" dishes -- mock turtle, mock oyster, mock mince, mock cream -- and they fall into two camps: economies that substitute a cheap ingredient for a costly one, and seasonal tricks that stand in for a fruit that is out of reach. This one is the second sort. Strawberries had a short local season and did not travel, so a household with peaches on hand later in the summer could plausibly have been approximating the look and the sugared, juicy eating of a strawberry bowl once the berries were gone -- though that motive is inference rather than anything the recipe states. The Dixie Cook-Book, like its sibling the Buckeye Cookery volumes, was assembled from contributions credited by initials and hometown, and a Newburyport, Massachusetts, cook turns up in a book branded Southern. The instruction to add pounded ice is a small marker of period and class: block ice cut in winter and stored in an icehouse was ordinary enough in a comfortable New England household by the 1880s, and chilled fruit at table was still worth mentioning.