Peach Pyramid
Cut a dozen peaches in halves, peel and take out stones, crack half the seeds, and blanch the kernels; make a clear boiling syrup of one pound of white sugar, and into it put the peaches and kernels; boil very gently for ten minutes, take out half the peaches, boil the rest for ten minutes longer, and take out all the peaches and kernels; mix with the syrup left in the kettle the strained juice of three lemons, and an ounce of isinglass dissolved in a little water and strained; boil up once, fill a mold half full of this syrup or jelly, let stand until "set," add part of the peaches and a little more jelly, and when this is "set," add the rest of the peaches, and fill up the mold with jelly. This makes an elegant ornament. - Miss E. Orissa Dolbear, Cincinnati.
The peach jelly and the moulding technique are sound period confectionery, but one instruction puts this dish outside what can be recommended today.
- The kernels are the problemPeach stones contain amygdalin, which in the presence of moisture and the kernel's own enzymes can release hydrogen cyanide. Blanching and a short boil in syrup cannot be relied on to remove it. The recipe boils the kernels with the fruit and then lifts them out with the peaches; it never says they are discarded, and only the peaches are named when the mould is filled.
- Why the recipe wanted themCracked peach and apricot kernels were the standard nineteenth-century source of the bitter-almond flavour known as noyau, used across preserves, ratafias and creams. That flavour is now supplied by benzaldehyde or almond extract, which carry none of the same risk.
- A dozen peaches, half the seedsThat is roughly six kernels across a single moulded dessert. Reported toxic doses vary with the fruit variety and the individual.
- IsinglassA gelatin obtained from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, sold in sheets or shreds and dissolved in water. An ounce is a large amount by modern standards; a current recipe for moulded fruit jelly should be used instead.
- Two batches of peachesThe staggered boiling looks deliberate: half the fruit comes out at ten minutes, which would leave it firmer in the mould, while the rest cooks a further ten minutes in the syrup. The recipe itself gives no reason.
- Setting in layersThe pyramid effect depends on each layer being fully firm before the next is poured, otherwise the fruit floats and the tiers merge. This is the one part of the method still worth copying with modern gelatin and no kernels.
Moulded fruit jellies were centrepiece work on the nineteenth-century American dessert table, and their whole point was display: a clear amber jelly suspending whole halved peaches, turned out onto a footed dish, announced that the household owned moulds, could afford a pound of white sugar and an ounce of isinglass, and had a cook with the patience to build it in stages. The Dixie Cook Book gathered such set pieces from named contributors — here a Miss E. Orissa Dolbear of Cincinnati — which is why the instructions read as one long confident breath rather than a numbered method. The cracked kernels reflect a habit older than the book: European confectioners are generally said to have used bitter almonds and stone-fruit kernels for the noyau flavour long before, and the danger was noted in nineteenth-century medical writing.