No. 3027

Crusts with Peaches or with Pears

Croutes aux Peches ou aux Poires

Put into a sautoir a dozen compoted peaches cut in halves, all of equal size; pour over some thick syrup and keep them warm. Cut from a kitchen loaf half-inch thick slices and from them take two-inch in diameter rounds, having as many as there are peaches. Color them in clarified butter, turning them over when done on one side to color on the other, then drain and cover lightly with apricot marmalade (No. 3675). Set a half peach on top of each and dress them on a dish; pour apricot marmalade (No. 3675). Set a half peach on top of each and dress them on a dish; pour over some peach syrup mingled with a few spoonfuls of kirsch and serve more of this separately.

For Pears.—Replace the peaches by compoted pears and finish exactly the same.

← No. 3026 Crusts with Madeira Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3028 Crusts with Pears a la Douglas →

For the Modern Kitchen

A croûte dessert is nothing more than fried bread, glazed, crowned with poached fruit and sauced. It stands or falls on the bread being crisp when it reaches the table.

The hinge: fry the bread properlyThe rounds must go into hot clarified butter and come out golden and firm right through, not merely tinted. Bread that is only lightly colored will soften under the glaze and syrup within minutes and the dish collapses into a soggy pudding.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than deep — a modern sauté pan or a large skillet. It is used here only to warm the fruit in its syrup, not to cook it further.
Compoted peachesPeaches peeled, halved, and poached in sugar syrup until tender, then cooled in that syrup. Good tinned peach halves in heavy syrup are a fair substitute; drain them and reduce the syrup until it coats a spoon.
Kitchen loafA plain, close-grained white loaf, not an open crumb. A day-old loaf cuts cleanly into half-inch slices and absorbs less butter. Twelve two-inch rounds will take several slices.
Clarified butterButter with the milk solids removed, so it can be taken hot enough to crisp bread without burning brown flecks onto it. Whole butter will scorch at this temperature; a mix of butter and neutral oil is the usual shortcut.
Apricot marmaladeNineteenth-century French usage: apricot jam boiled down and sieved smooth, used as a glaze. Warm apricot preserves pushed through a strainer and reduced slightly gives the same thing. Brush it on thinly — it is a seal and a flavor, not a filling.
A duplicated lineThe sentence beginning "Set a half peach on top of each" appears twice in the text as printed here, evidently an error in setting or transcription. Glaze the croûtes once, top each with a peach half once, and sauce them.
The kirsch sauceWarm the peach poaching syrup, reduce it if thin, and stir in the kirsch off the heat so the spirit is not driven off. The recipe says only "a few spoonfuls"; a few spoonfuls to a cup of syrup is a reasonable proportion.
Yield and timingA dozen halves serves six as a plated dessert. Fry the bread last and assemble immediately before serving; these do not hold.

A Little History

Croûtes were a standing category of hot entremets in nineteenth-century French kitchens: rounds or bands of fried or oven-dried bread, glazed with apricot, and built up with compoted fruit — a respectable use for good bread often said to echo the older croûte au pot and the English fried-bread desserts of the same period, though the descent is traditional rather than documented. Charles Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, gives a long run of them, distinguished mainly by the fruit and the liqueur; this one sits beside No. 3026, made with Madeira, and No. 3028, Pears à la Douglas. The kirsch is the tell of the fashion: cherry brandy from Alsace and the Black Forest was the standard perfume for stewed stone fruit in the classical repertoire, as it still is in a Black Forest cake. That the apricot glaze is cross-referenced to a separate numbered recipe rather than described is characteristic of the book, which assumes a stocked larder — though Ranhofer explicitly offered it to private families as well as to hotels and restaurants.