In the United States today, we can eat just about anything we want whenever we want. Even with the recent supply chain issues, fresh fruit, shipped from South America or elsewhere, is available even in the dead of a Minnesota winter. We don’t have to pay attention to what’s in-season. (Although I still believe fresh and seasonal is better.)
In any case, it wasn’t so long ago that the only way to eat fruit in winter was to preserve it, and so many historical cookbooks have a lot of recipes for preserving foods by drying, pickling, salting, or sugaring.
This month I’m thinking particularly about peaches. Peaches originated in China at least 4000 years ago, and feature heavily in many Chinese tales (including Journey to the West, arguably the most well-known Chinese story). The trees quickly spread westward. The Romans thought that peaches came from Persia, and so called them malum persicum (persian apple). This became pêche in French, then peach in English. Romans cultivated peaches in many parts of their empire, but with the fall of Rome, peach production in much of Europe declined.
The Spanish brought the peach to North America in the 16th century, where it quickly spread wildly through cultivation by Native Americans and on its own. In fact, peaches did so well in North America that some botanists assumed the peach was indigenous.
Thomas Jefferson was among the colonists who loved peaches. Peaches were widely grown in Virginia and other parts of the south, often as hog feed or to make into a fermented drink called Mobby (which could be used as cider, or distilled into brandy.)(Beverley, 260.)
As a teenager in San Jose, California, I had some interesting experiences with peaches. The first was when my younger brother and I were hired as pickers on summer day. We climbed into the back of a truck along with about a dozen other teens. We were driven to an orchard outside the city and set free to pick. The pay was .50 a lug. It soon became apparent that my brother and I were not destined to get rich from this job. The day was hot, and peaches were scarce on the trees. It turned out we’d been taken to a ‘pre-picked’ orchard to glean the remainder. I think we earned under two dollars to split between us for that day’s work. It taught me to appreciate farm labor, and convinced me to look for other work.
A few years later I gave up a remarkably fun job at Frontier Village, a local amusement theme park, to work in a peach cannery. I worked the swing shift since it paid better than the day shift. My job was to stand by a conveyor belt and remove any slices of rotten peach as they flowed by and into the cans. We were provided with plastic hair nets, gloves, and aprons, but peach juice permeated the air and seeped into our pores. Stray hairs tickled my cheek, but any casual, thoughtless attempt to tuck the hair back in only made me stickier. Possibly the worst part of this job was the dripping ceiling. The cannery was a metal pole building. In the daytime, the sun beat on the roof and the steam for the peach processing rose. When the sun went down the metal quickly cooled so that all night long, the roof rained sweet peach juice. For several years after moving on from that job, I steered clear of peaches in any form.
But I’ve come to appreciate fresh peaches all over again, especially at this time of year. August is the month when peaches are at their best. Although peaches don’t grow well as far north as Minnesota, truckloads of fresh peaches arrive in town from Georgia. I like to buy a box of them, and gorge on the delicious fruit all month. But even with a peach a day, I can’t always eat them all before they spoil. So,like my ancestors, I’ve been exploring ways to preserve peaches.
The easiest is freezing sliced peaches, a luxury the American colonists didn’t have. There are many recipes for peach marmalade in early American cookbooks. But the recipe I found most intriguing was for peach chips.
Mary Randolph’s recipe is very simple (Randolph, 156). It is basically a way to candy the peaches, thus preserving both their color and their flavor. Randolph’s recipe calls for drying the peaches in the sun, but the modern cook can easily use a dehydrator for the same purpose.
Modern version of a recipe for Peach Chips:
Slice 2 peaches very thin. Put them in a pot with half their weight in sugar (about 4 ounces or ½ c.) and a little water. Bring it gently to a boil, and boil the mixture a few minutes, until the peach slices look transparent. Stir gently from time to time, but avoid stirring too much so as not to break up the peaches. Strain off the syrup (which can be used for pancakes or as flavoring for tea or coffee). Dry the slices in a single layer either in a dehydrator or in the sun. (It’s also possible to dry peach slices without candying them–just like apples.)
And enjoy the delicious flavor of peaches year-round.
Sources:
Beverley, Robert. The History of Virginia (Richmond: J. W. Randolph, 1855), 260. Original work published London, 1705, with title: The History and Present State of Virginia
Randolph, Mary. The Virginia Housewife Or, Methodical Cook. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler & Co., 1860. (Facsimile by Dover Publications, 1993, with introduction by Janice Bluestein Longone).
BRIC-A-BRAC 