No. 3081

Conde Peaches

Peches Conde

Blanch half a pound of rice; drain and replace it in the saucepan with a pint of cream and half of a vanilla stick; push the pan into a slack oven and allow it to cook for forty minutes. Remove the rice, suppress the vanilla and put in six egg-yolks, three ounces of fresh butter, three ounces of sugar and a little salt. Butter and sugar a mold one inch high by seven inches in diameter; fill it to the top with rice and place it in a bain-marie for twenty minutes. Split in two twelve fine peaches, remove the kernels, blanch and peel off the skins, pare nicely and lay them to macerate in a hot thirty-degree vanilla syrup; one hour later drain the peaches on a cloth and wipe them well. Unmold the rice on a dish and dress the peaches over dome-shaped, cover them with apricot marmalade (No. 3675), bestrew with shredded pistachios and decorate the cavities between the peaches, and also the border of the rice, with angelica lozenges and split candied cherries; surround the base with small pear-shaped rice croquettes. Set the dressed dish in the oven for twenty minutes to heat well, and serve with an apricot sauce and Madeira wine diluted with vanilla syrup. (See Humboldt pudding, No. 3100.)

← No. 3080 Peaches a la Colbert Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3082 Meringued Peaches →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's-era composed dessert: a shallow disk of vanilla rice custard, domed with poached peach halves and glazed. Most of the work is done in advance, and the assembled dish only needs reheating.

Blanching the riceShort-grain rice, dropped into boiling water for about five minutes and drained, then cooked in the cream. This washes off surface starch and prevents the finished rice from tasting pasty. Half a pound is about 1 1/4 cups dry.
Slack oven275-300F. The pint of cream is only just enough for half a pound of rice, so cover the pan and check at 25 minutes; add warm cream or milk if it tightens before the grains are tender.
Vanilla stickA vanilla bean; the recipe uses half of one. "Suppress the vanilla" means fish the pod out before the yolks go in.
Yolks and butterBeat the six yolks with the sugar first and stir them into the rice off the heat, or they will scramble in streaks. The mixture should be thick enough to hold a mounded spoon before it goes into the mold.
The moldOne inch high by seven inches across is a shallow disk, not a pudding basin: a 7-inch cake pan or tart ring works. Butter it, dust with sugar, and set it in a roasting pan of hot water for the 20 minutes; the recipe gives no oven temperature for this stage.
Thirty-degree syrupThirty degrees Baume, the standard confectioner's syrup of the period: a heavy sugar syrup, distinctly sweeter than a syrup made with equal weights of sugar and water, boiled briefly with a vanilla bean. The peaches macerate in it hot for an hour, which poaches them lightly rather than cooking them soft.
Peeling the peachesThirty seconds in boiling water then straight into cold, and the skins slip off freestone peaches. Clingstone fruit will not halve cleanly; use freestone.
Apricot marmalade and angelicaThe marmalade here is a strained, reduced apricot glaze, not English marmalade; sieved apricot jam warmed and thinned with a spoon of the syrup gives the same result. Candied angelica lozenges are now a specialist item and can simply be left out, or replaced with more candied cherries.
Final heatingThe twenty minutes in the oven is to warm the assembly through; the recipe specifies no temperature, so keep it gentle. Glaze and pistachios go on before it goes in; if the peaches begin to color, cover loosely with foil.
YieldTwelve peaches split in two gives twenty-four halves domed over a seven-inch base; a generous dessert for a table of eight or more. The recipe also calls for small pear-shaped rice croquettes around the base.

A Little History

In nineteenth-century French cookery a sweet dish à la Condé was generally built on rice: riz à la Condé was a sweetened vanilla rice base on which poached fruit was dressed and glazed, and the name is often traced to the kitchens of the Condé family, the princely branch of the Bourbons. By the time Charles Ranhofer set down The Epicurean (1894) after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, the formula was standard repertoire. The elaborate finish, with pistachios, angelica lozenges, split candied cherries and a ring of fried croquettes, belongs to the era when a hot entremets came to the table as a built centerpiece.