No. 3084

Stevens Peaches

Peches a la Stevens

Infuse a vanilla bean for one hour in a quart of boiling milk; take it out and return the milk to the fire; at the first boil drop into it like rain half a pound of tapioca; allow it to boil up once or twice, then finish cooking on the side of the range without allowing it to boil; add to it two ounces of sugar and four eggs, beating them in one by one. Butter some timbale molds (No. 1, Fig. 137), cover the bottoms with a ring of quince paste and fill the center of this ring with a round of greengage cut out with a cutter, then fill up the timbales with the prepared tapioca and poach in a bain-marie for thirty minutes. When firm unmold and dress in a circle on a round dish; fill the center of this circle with a compote of peaches, decorating the top with fruits. Reduce the syrup used for compoting the peaches and with it make a sauce, adding peach marmalade and maraschino.

← No. 3083 Richelieu Peaches Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3085 Pears Ferriere →

For the Modern Kitchen

A moulded tapioca custard with fruit set into the base, unmoulded and ringed around poached peaches. The hinge is heat control: once the eggs go in, the mixture must never boil again or it will curdle and weep in the mould.

Quantities in modern termsA quart of milk is 4 cups; half a pound of tapioca is about 1 1/3 cups of small pearl (not instant) tapioca; two ounces of sugar is roughly 1/4 cup. This gives a deliberately stiff pudding, since it has to hold a moulded shape.
Tapioca type mattersUse small pearl tapioca and rain it into boiling milk while stirring, exactly as written, or it will clump into a mass. Instant or minute tapioca absorbs far faster and will thicken to paste before the eggs are in.
Finishing off the boil"On the side of the range" means the cooler edge of a coal stove — the equivalent is the lowest burner setting or a double boiler, held at about 180F so the pearls swell through without the milk scorching.
Adding the eggsLet the tapioca drop below a simmer before beating in the four eggs one at a time. Ranhofer relies on this stage for the set; if the mixture is near boiling the eggs scramble in threads.
Quince paste and greengageQuince paste is Spanish or Portuguese membrillo, sold in blocks; slice a thin ring from it. Greengages are a small green-gold plum, briefly in season in late summer; canned greengages in syrup, drained and cut with a round cutter, are the practical substitute.
Timbale moulds and the bain-marieTimbale moulds of this sort hold roughly 4 to 6 fl oz. Butter them well and set them in a bain-marie -- a pan of hot water, on the stovetop or in a moderate oven -- with the water coming well up the sides, and cook for the stated thirty minutes, holding the water below a boil so the custard does not bubble; a knife inserted at the edge should come out clean. Let them settle a few minutes before unmoulding so the custard firms enough to release.
MaraschinoThis means maraschino liqueur, the clear dry cherry-stone spirit, not the syrup from a jar of dyed cherries. Add it to the reduced syrup off the heat so the aroma survives.
Peach compote and saucePoach peeled peach halves in a light syrup until just tender, then reduce that syrup by about half and slacken it with a spoonful or two of peach jam plus the liqueur, to a consistency that coats. Strain if you want the polish of the original.
YieldAbout eight small timbales, which is a course for eight at the end of a long dinner rather than a dessert for four.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its dessert chapters are full of dishes named for the restaurant's patrons and for the hotels of the day; who the Stevens name honours here is not recorded, and Ranhofer, as usual, explains nothing. The construction is pure nineteenth-century restaurant thinking: a cheap bulk starch, tapioca, is enriched with vanilla-infused milk and eggs, moulded into individual timbales, and dressed up with two costly preserves — quince paste and greengages — set decoratively into the base so they appear on top when unmoulded. Tapioca, made from cassava and imported from Brazil and the East Indies, had become common in American and European kitchens by mid-century and was valued partly because it took a mould cleanly; maraschino, associated above all with Zadar on the Dalmatian coast, was a common flourish of the period in fruit dishes.