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Apricots in Cream
Open and drain a pint can apricots. Dress on a fruit dish and serve with thick cream and powdered sugar separately.
Barely a recipe and entirely dependent on the quality of three things: the fruit, the cream and the sugar. The period vocabulary is the only real obstacle.
- A pint can16 fl oz by volume; the modern 15-oz (by weight) can of apricot halves in syrup is a workable stand-in. Figure one can for two, perhaps three; double it for four.
- Powdered sugarIn cookbooks of this era "powdered" usually means finely ground granulated sugar, what is now sold as caster or superfine, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar in a modern box. Superfine dissolves cleanly on wet fruit; confectioners' sugar turns pasty.
- Thick creamHeavy or double cream, unwhipped, poured from a pitcher. Ultra-pasteurized cream will do but tastes flatter.
- Drain wellThe hinge of the dish. Canning syrup left clinging thins the cream and makes the sugar pointless. Drain the fruit in a sieve for several minutes, cut side down, before arranging it.
- Served separatelyCream and sugar go to the table in their own vessels so each person dresses their own fruit. Arrange the apricots cut side up so the hollows catch the cream.
- ChillingThe recipe says nothing about temperature. Chill the unopened can and the cream thoroughly; the dish is dull at room temperature.
Recipes like this one are a record of what canning did to the American table. By the turn of the twentieth century, California orchards were shipping canned apricots, peaches and pears across the country and into hotel kitchens, and a fruit that had been strictly seasonal and largely regional became something a cook could open in February. The instruction is one of service rather than technique: fruit dressed on a proper dish, cream and sugar passed separately, treated as a course rather than as leftovers. The apricot itself is far older, generally traced to China and carried west through Persia into the Mediterranean, where its Latin-derived name eventually reached English through Arabic and Portuguese.