No. 3080

Peaches a la Colbert

Peches a la Colbert

Plunge twelve fine peaches into boiling water for a few seconds in order to skin them easily, then split, pare and take out the kernels; put the peaches to macerate in a hot twelve-degree syrup flavored with maraschino. As soon as the fruit is tender drain on a cloth, wipe and stuff each half with rice and cream flavored with vanilla (No. 160) and finished with a few egg-yolks; place two half peaches together to resemble whole ones, then cover them with a light coating of apricot marmalade (No. 3675), roll in pulverized macaroons, dip in beaten eggs, then in white bread-crumbs and fry to a fine golden color. Cut some slices of savarin cake three-quarters of an inch thick and with a pastry cutter remove some rounds two and a half inches in diameter; slit these half an inch deep with another pastry cutter an inch and a half in diameter, inserting a small kitchen knife on the side at a quarter of an inch from the bottom and with the tip cut around to detach the center only. Lay the prepared crusts on a baking tin, besprinkle over with sugar and glaze in a hot oven. As soon as this is accomplished and they become cold fill the empty centers with a salpicon of fruits mingled with apricot marmalade; decorate the edges of each crust with twelve small sticks of angelica, each an inch long. Lay the crusts on a dish, dress the peaches on top and heat in the oven twenty minutes before serving. Have a separate apricot sauce, adding a few spoonfuls of almond milk and flavored with maraschino (No. 3001.)

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For the Modern Kitchen

A full Ranhofer construction: poached peaches stuffed with vanilla rice, breaded and fried, set on glazed savarin rounds. It is assembled in stages, and almost all of it can be done ahead.

Twelve-degree syrupDegrees here are read with a saccharometer, most likely on the Baumé scale. Twelve degrees is a light poaching syrup of roughly 22 percent sugar — on the order of 1¼ cups sugar dissolved in 1 quart water. Add the maraschino off the heat so it does not cook away.
"Take out the kernels"This means the stones. Do not be tempted to crack them for flavor; peach kernels contain amygdalin and are not a food ingredient. Halve along the natural seam and lift the stone out with the point of a knife.
Peach ripenessFreestone peaches that are ripe but still firm hold their shape; dead-ripe fruit collapses in the syrup and will not survive breading. A few minutes of gentle simmering is usually enough — "tender" here does not mean soft.
The rice fillingNo. 160 is Ranhofer's vanilla rice cooked in milk; here it is combined with cream and finished with egg yolks as the recipe directs. It must be cold and stiff before stuffing, or the halves will not hold together in the fryer. Chill the assembled peaches thoroughly before crumbing.
FryingDeep fat at 350–360F. The interior is already cooked, so you are only setting the crust — a minute or two per side. Hotter fat scorches the coating, which carries sugar from the marmalade and macaroons beneath the crumbs and colors fast.
Apricot marmaladeNo. 3675 is Ranhofer's apricot marmalade. Warm sieved apricot preserve works in its place; it must be tacky rather than runny so the macaroon crumbs adhere.
Oven temperaturesA "hot oven" for glazing the savarin rounds is conventionally taken as somewhere around 400–450F, and a few minutes is all it takes once the sugar begins to caramelize. The final reheat before serving is better done at a moderate 350F for the stated twenty minutes.
Savarin and angelicaSavarin is a yeast-raised, syrup-soaked ring cake; store-bought brioche or a plain baba works for the cut rounds. Candied angelica stem is now a specialty item — candied citron or thin strips of candied orange peel stand in for the twelve small sticks.
SalpiconA salpicon is simply a fine, even dice — here mixed candied or poached fruits bound with the apricot marmalade, cut small enough to sit level in the hollowed crusts.
YieldTwelve peaches make twelve reassembled "whole" fruits on twelve crusts: twelve servings. The apricot sauce with almond milk and maraschino is passed separately, not spooned over.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and this is a characteristic piece of it: a fruit dessert built up through three separate preparations that each carry their own recipe number. The name is traditionally said to honor Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, whose name was attached in nineteenth-century French kitchens to a loose family of dishes often involving a coating — most famously sole Colbert — and it is the crumbing and frying, not the peaches, that earns the label here. The maraschino, distilled from Dalmatian marasca cherries, was a standard restaurant flavoring of the period, used with fruit far more freely than it is today.