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Peaches, Chantilly
Peel twelve ripe peaches, cut them in halves, remove stones, then place in a bowl. Add one tablespoon powdered sugar and two tablespoons maraschino, turn them well in the seasoning, then let infuse. Place two gills thick cream in a copper basin, set basin on ice and sharply whisk up cream to a stiff froth, then add one ounce fine sugar, six drops vanilla essence and beat up again for two minutes. Dress the cream pyramid-like on a cold dish, arrange the peaches around the base, sprinkle a little sugar over all and serve.
A straightforward assembly that depends entirely on the cream holding its shape and the peaches being ripe enough to give up juice. Two ingredient names have shifted meaning since 1906.
- GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of cream is one cup. Whipped, that yields roughly two cups of volume, enough to build a mound but not a monument.
- MaraschinoThis means maraschino liqueur, a clear cherry-and-pit spirit of the Luxardo type, not the pink syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. The liqueur is itself sweetened, but its two tablespoons add bitter-almond depth as well; the syrup would only add sugar.
- Powdered and fine sugarIn this period "powdered" sugar generally means finely ground granulated rather than modern cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. Superfine or caster sugar is the closest match for both the peaches and the cream; one ounce is about two tablespoons.
- Copper basin on iceAny wide metal bowl works, and the ice is the part that matters. Chill bowl, whisk and cream thoroughly and the cream whips faster and holds longer. Use cream at 35 percent fat or above; ultra-pasteurized whips but tastes flatter.
- Vanilla essenceSix drops is only about a sixteenth to an eighth of a teaspoon of modern extract, a very light scenting. Add it with the sugar, after the cream is whipped, not at the start.
- Let infuseNo time is given. Twenty to thirty minutes at room temperature is enough for the sugar to draw out syrup without collapsing the fruit. Longer and the halves slump.
- PeelingFreestone peaches at full ripeness peel after thirty seconds in boiling water and a plunge into ice water. Underripe fruit will not peel cleanly and will not give up juice in the maceration.
- Assembly and yieldBuild the cream and arrange the fruit just before serving, on a dish that has been chilled; the cream weeps once the peach syrup reaches it. Twelve peaches and a cup of cream serves six generously.
Cr"me Chantilly " sweetened, vanilla-scented whipped cream " takes its name from the Ch ttteau de Chantilly north of Paris, and is often attributed to Fran"ois Vatel, ma tre d'h tel there in the seventeenth century, though the connection is traditional rather than documented and the name only becomes common in French cookbooks well after his death. What makes this version of the period rather than timeless is the maraschino: the Dalmatian cherry liqueur was a fixture of grand-hotel and restaurant dessert work around 1900, used to perfume fruit the way kirsch or curacao were, and it turns up constantly in the repertoire of the American-Italian chefs who wrote for that trade. Peaches with cream in this style sit alongside Escoffier's p ache Melba as one of several restaurant treatments devised for the short late-summer peach season, when the fruit needed no cooking at all.