A Utopia of Peaches

Some years ago, my dad and stepmom gave me a charming framed botanical illustration of a Lizzie Peach for Christmas. (No one else does anymore, but they still call me Lizzy.) The print hangs on my dining room wall, unmarred by Bill's name. (Unfortunately, I'm not quite savvy enough to get a clean version of the print up here, but you can see her blushing sweetness anyway. ) I was looking at it the other day and thinking about the fact that there was a "Lizzie Peach." What other names might be out there?

So many names! So much imagination--not just mere descriptors, such as "Delicious" or "Redskin." The old names were personal, and eaters had personal relationships with their fruit. Imagine a world in which the supremacy of the peach could be defended on the grounds that to praise it is to “gild refined gold.” Now, imagine a society in which the following defense of the peach would be coherent to anyone but the most freaky-geeky foodies:

If any one doubts the precise rank which the peach should take among the different fruits of even that cornucopian month—September—and wishes to convince us of the higher flavor of a Seckel or a Belle Lucrative pear, we will promise to stop his mouth and his argument with a sunny-cheeked and melting ‘George the Fourth’ or luscious ‘Rareripe!’

This world existed once, right here in these glorious United States. But it was 108 years ago, when people got most of their sugar from fruit, I guess, and so devoted the same emotional energy to thinking about peaches and plums and grapes as we do to dreaming of--and naming--Twix Bars and Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk. To be fair, I found this encomium as I researched a bit of drupian history (drupes are the family to which peaches belong, and include almonds, apricots, cherries and plums) in the 1900 edition of Charles and Andrew Jackson Downing's The Fruits And Fruit Trees Of America: Or The Culture, Propagation And Management, In The Garden And Orchard, Of Fruit Trees Generally. So I guess they were writing for an audience of initiates. But still! Have you ever heard of a Belle Lucrative pear? If so, where can I find one? And a George the Fourth peach? Does it wear a powdered wig?

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The peach, at least, originated in China but came to the West via Iran, in the Near East. In fact, the name of the peach comes from Persia. (You have to try saying Persia with your mouth full of peach and smiling because it's so good for this to make much sense, but then you'll hear it.) Peaches made their American debut in 1680, and flourished here. In fact, according to the Downings, the States and China are the only countries where peaches are widely cultivated in open orchards (but maybe things have changed in the last 100 years?). Seems that they need our hot summers and chilly winters. (Elsewhere, as in Europe and the Northeast, they do well espaliered against walls, monastery-style.)

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

We eat peach flesh, but the kernel can be used in a cordial called Noyau. If you can't get your hands on some Noyau and don't have the time to split some pits and distill some, you can steep the leaves in some other brandy and make a passing substitute. You can grow a tree from the pit, according to the Downings, but it's only advisable if you don't plan to espalier. In that case, better to use a dwarf rootstock, such as a plum.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

So all parts of the noble peach are useful. In fact, to return to China and my friend Nancie's comment about the Chinese god of immortality, the Downings report that in east Asia the peach has had a status similar to the apple in Western myth: as a fruit with magical and sometimes dangerous power.

The traditions of a peach tree, the fruit of which conferred immortality, and which bore only once in a thousand years—and of another peach-tree of knowledge, which existed in the most remote period, on a mountain guarded by a thousand demons, the fruit of which produced death—are said to be distinctly preserved in some of the early Chinese writings. Whatever may have been the nature of these extraordinary trees, it is certain that, as Lord Bacon says, ‘not a slip or sucker has been left behind.’ We must therefore content ourselves with the delight which a fine peach of modern times affords to the palate and the eye.

Hear, hear.

A Faint Rumbling in the Distance

Yes, that sound you hear is the first of the Great Peaches of 2008 rolling towards a farmers' market near you. Or maybe it was the stampede of otherwise-reasonable people shoving each other aside to get at them. Last Saturday, Jones brought several dozen boxes of Derby peaches to the MFM. (A reminder to all readers: start posting those peach recipes now!) You could just feel the pent-up desire as word spread that they were there; the movement toward the north end of the market was almost unconscious. Must. Have. Peaches.

Of course, I've already written about last year's traumatic frost. No need to dwell on that! Nor on the near-miss we experienced this spring. But it hardly seems real that we already have mature stonefruit at the end of May. Up north, where I hail from, we don't get scratch (except strawberries) till at least June. My trees up at Jones won't bear till later--my earliest, the Harrow Beauties, in July. But the arrival of the Derbies sent me into a bit of a panic, so on Memorial Day, up to Jones I dashed.

My friends the Harpers and the Iveses came along with their kids. Little Anna and my son Gus collected baby peaches. They plan to found a museum on our front stoop.

Gus wandered into a fairyland zone of the orchard, where my heirloom Elberta tree is.

The last time we were up there, the peaches were tiny and the difference between the frost-stunted fruits and their healthy brethren was negligible. Now the runts stand out. The rains and heat have also encouraged the vetch and the leaves and the grasses; the place glowed green against a heavy sky. On this sultry day, the whole place felt enchanted.

We even found a peach-troll.

After we visited my trees, we went over to pick some more strawberries. Not that I needed any; I'd bought 4 quarts at the MFM on Saturday. But it's getting so that I feel ill at ease if I don't have to rearrange the condiments in the fridge to make room for berries. By the time we got over there, piled-up clouds were tumbling in and spattering us occasionally with big cooling drops. Just as we filled our buckets, thunder growled us off the field and we took refuge in the lunchroom adjacent to the Jones farmstand, just in time. As rain hammered on the tin roof, we reveled in pimento-cheese sandwiches, tender white beans and cornbread, and lemonade.

It was a perfect Memorial Day.

God Bless the Child

Well, tonight's is a kwik-e post, since I spent all my allotted blog time diddling with the photo in my header. Now you're seeing some preadolescent peaches up there, and aren't they purdy? When I drove up to the orchard last week, Mr. Jones, Sr. showed me the difference between a young peach that had frost damage and one that didn't. Look closely:

Can you see the center, where the pit will form? Even though the fruity part around it looks healthy, the pit is blighted.

Now here's a baby that was higher up on the tree, and therefore above the pool of cold air that settled into this valley that night:




One thing that I learned is that these sterile fruits will ripen anyway--I think they call them nubs but I'll check because I might have made that up--and they get really super sweet. People make jam out of them. Guess what I'll be writing about in August?

Speaking of jam, I've been making jam like crazy this past week after picking strawberries at Jones and also buying them from the Windermere folks and Jones at the MFM and also (dear God stop me) buying some great Mississippi berries at Easy-Way. I'm using the recipe from Russ Parsons' How to Pick a Peach, which I'm pretty sure you'll be hearing about again. You take equal weights of cleaned, trimmed and halved berries and sugar--2 lb. each--and simmer them with a pinch of salt till the sugar is dissolved and the juice is clear, no longer. Add the juice of a lemon or an orange and let this fragrant mess sit overnight. The next day, boil it in 2-cup batches, looking each time for the berry juice to hit the sheeting stage, when it runs off a spatula in a few shiny rivulets rather than one. Or you can put a plate in the freezer for 10 minutes before and then, when you think your jam is done, drip a drop onto the plate. If it doesn't really run, your preserves are ready.

You can just stick this in jars in the fridge and give it to all your friends right away, but I went canning crazy and put it up. (Family members, pretend you didn't see this when Christmas comes!) The jam (RP points put it's technically preserves, since it doesn't have enough sugar!?!) is almost syrupy but has an amazingly bright and fresh strawberry flavor because it doesn't get cooked to kingdom come. Good on yogurt and ice cream, too.