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Stewed Prunes and Peaches
Prepare the above exactly the same as per No. 169, using same quantity of peaches instead of the pears.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it points back to the preceding stewed prunes and pears and asks only that peaches replace the pears. Everything worth knowing is in the assumptions the original leaves unstated.
- The cross-referenceYou need recipe No. 169 in the same book to cook this at all. Read it first; the peaches simply take the place of the pears in the same quantity.
- Which peachesIn a compote of this kind the peaches may well be dried, matching the dried prunes so both soften at a similar rate. If you use fresh peaches, add them only towards the end of cooking or they will collapse into the syrup.
- SoakingDried prunes and dried peaches want several hours in cold water, or overnight, before they go on the heat. Cook them in the soaking water, which already holds a good deal of their flavour.
- Heat levelKeep the pot at a bare simmer, barely trembling. A true boil splits prune skins and turns the fruit to threads while the centres are still firm.
- Sugar timingAdd sugar once the fruit has begun to soften. Sugar added at the start firms the skins and slows the whole business considerably.
- FlavouringsA strip of lemon peel, a short piece of cinnamon stick or a few cloves is period-appropriate and keeps the sweetness from turning flat. Remove whole spices before serving.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; as a rough guide, a pound of mixed dried fruit stewed this way serves four to six. It was eaten warm or cold, at breakfast or as a plain dessert, often with cream or a spoonful of the reduced syrup.
- KeepingCovered and refrigerated, the finished compote holds four or five days and improves after the first, as the syrup thickens and the fruit absorbs it.
Stewed dried fruit occupies a large and now largely forgotten place in Anglo-American cookery of the period: before reliable year-round fresh fruit, prunes, dried apples, pears and peaches were pantry staples, cheap, shelf-stable, and valued for their laxative effect, which the nineteenth-century household regarded as a virtue rather than an aside. The word prune comes through French from the Latin prunum, plum, and in nineteenth-century usage still meant simply a dried plum, with much of the trade supply arriving from France and a growing share from California towards the end of the century. Compotes of this kind appear in cookbooks as clusters of near-identical entries with one fruit swapped for another, which is what this terse cross-reference is: an editorial shorthand common to the large compiled cookbooks of the era, where a numbered master method carried a string of variations behind it.