Lily Bart's Peche a la Melba; or, my dad's favorite dessert: Peach Melba

I love Wharton’s The House of Mirth. I like books where people are miserable and come to bad ends. That’s also why I am a Zola fan; I think it’s because somehow it makes me feel better when I’m done.

And so: Poor, beautiful Lily Bart. Abandoned financially by her aunt, from whom she was expecting a large inheritance, we watch her fall steadily downward from desirable, fashionable socialite at glittering parties, holding men in the palm of her hand, to boarding in a single room in a walk-up apartment building, depending on the kindness of friends to keep her afloat, and then finally, dismally, wretchedly, working at a millinery, drowning in debt. I won’t tell you how it ends, except to say, there is a sleeping draught involved. We all know how that works out in literature.

In this passage, Lily is at a fancy dinner with her socialite friends and finally grasps that her position in society is tenuous at best, and likely unraveling before her eyes. Her once-friend Mrs. Trenor greets her with cool civility rather than the warmth Lily was expecting, and Lily then knows her gilded time is short. She is left both deciding on her dessert and pondering her future.

…even Rosedale, flushed as he was with the importance of keeping such company, at once took the temperature of Mrs. Trenor’s cordiality and reflected it in his off- hand greeting of Miss Bart. Trenor, red and uncomfortable, had cut short his salutations on the pretext of a word to say to the head waiter; and the rest of the group soon melted away in Mrs. Trenor’s wake.

It was over in a moment; the waiter, menu in hand, still hung on the choice between Coupe Jacques and Peche a la Melba, but Miss Bart, in the interval, had taken the measure of her fate. Where Judy Trenor led all the world would follow, and Lily had the doomed sense of the castaway who has signalled in vain to fleeing sails.

There: don’t you feel better now? Have some dessert.

You will need:

• 1 can of good quality peaches

• butter

• good vanilla ice cream

• seedless raspberry jam or all-fruit; I did see in some old recipes that strawberry sauce was used also

Peach Melba is extraordinarily simple: poached peaches over vanilla ice cream with a raspberry sauce. It is very delicious and my dad’s favorite. Legend says that the famous chef Georges Escoffier prepared it for the singer Nellie Melba, after hearing her sing. Unfortunately, it is March right now and there are no peaches! But I need something easy and quick to do for this entry, so we will compromise and make do with what we have. Jacques Pepin, in his Fast Food My Way, has a recipe where he uses canned apricots for his clafoutis. If it’s good enough for Jacques, it’s good enough for me. Canned peaches it is. (Although I’ll also tell you what to do with the fresh peaches if you want to make that too.)

Find a good quality canned peach in syrup. You can use halves or slices. I meant to use halves but picked up the wrong can, and wasn’t going back to the store for a third time today. As it turned out, I think it looks fine and it was a lot easier not to have to cut up the peach halves with a spoon to eat them!

I put all of the peaches, a little of their syrup and two tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan. Cook it just until the syrup and butter combine into a nice sauce. Believe it or not, I added a teaspoon of sugar to this, as it just wasn’t sweet enough. If you use unsalted butter, you may want to add a pinch of salt.

Strain the butter/peach juice liquid into another pan, and to that add about a half cup of jam. Now cook that down and whisk it, until it coats the back of a spoon nicely. Let it cool a little so it doesn’t melt your ice cream too fast. Scoop the ice cream into a bowl, arrange peach slices around it, and pour syrup over top. And then pity poor Lily Bart, who probably didn’t enjoy her dessert as she should have.

(Alternatively, you can poach four fresh peach halves in a simple syrup. According to The Joy of Cooking, simple syrup is: 1 1/4 cup sugar to a quart of water, stirred together and cooked until it makes a syrup. Poach your peaches gently in the syrup and set aside to cool.)

Peaches in butter with a little of their own syrup. Pour out the buttery liquid to use for your jam sauce.

Add about a half cup of jam to the buttery liquid, and whisk and simmer.

Raspberry sauce is ready when it coats the spoon. Set aside to cool a bit so that it won’t melt your ice cream.

I had store bought sugar cookies in the pantry so I added it to the bowl.

Of course Potterheads love Peach Melba! Just like Pop Pop.

This recipe comes from the January 11, 1925 edition of the The Dayton Daily News. In it, New York newspaperman Karl K. Kitchen describes meeting Chef Escoffier, and being told that the legendary story of his invention of Peach Melba was not entirely true. He did prepare it often for Nellie Melba, he told Kitchen, as she and her guests at the Carlton Hotel were fond of it, but claims in this article that he never did hear her sing.

Main Street's Perfectly Divine Angel's Food Cake

I’m not a fan of angel food cake. However I do love this book by Sinclair Lewis, and this scene in particular.

Main Street was first published in 1920 and was a scathing look at morals, conformity, and idealism in small town America. Carol Kennicott, a librarian, leaves St. Paul to marry a country doctor from Gopher Prairie. She attempts to bring beauty, culture, and progressive St. Paul ideals to her small town, but is rebuffed and sometimes ridiculed by her new neighbors. In this scene, she is at a luncheon with many of the town’s leading ladies, and Carol becomes embroiled in a conversation about the purpose of the town library. Things go quickly astray and Carol is not able to extricate herself gracefully. She leaves almost in tears, and frustrated, realizing that to maintain any place in society in Gopher Prairie, she must bow to these women for the rest of her life. The angel’s food cake, however, was divine.

‘Though Juanita Haydock was highly advanced in the matters of finger-bowls, doilies, and bath mats, her “refreshments” were typical of all the afternoon- coffees. Juanita’s best friends, Mrs. Dyer and Mrs. Dashaway, passed large dinner plates, each with a spoon, a fork, and a coffee cup without a saucer. …They then distributed hot buttered rolls, coffee poured from an enamel ware pot, stuffed olives, potato salad, and angel’s food cake. There was, even in the most strictly conforming Gopher Prairie circles, a certain option as to collations. The olives need not be stuffed. Doughnuts were in some houses well though of as a substitute for the hot buttered rolls. But there was in all the town no heretic save Carol who omitted angels’ food….

Conversation turns to the local library. Carol argues that “the chief task of the librarian is to get people to read.”

Miss Villets, the town librarian, responds:

‘“You feel so? My feeling, Mrs. Kennicott, and I am merely quoting the librarian of a very large college, is that the first duty of the conscientious librarian is to preserve the books.”

“Oh!’”Carol repented her ‘Oh’. Miss Villets stiffened, and attacked:

“It may be all very well in cities, where they have unlimited funds, to let nasty children ruin books and just deliberately tear them up, and fresh young men take more books out than they are entitled to by the regulations, but I’m never going to permit it in this library!

“What if some children are destructive? They learn to read. Books are cheaper than minds.”

“Nothing is cheaper than the minds of some of these children that come in and bother me simply because their mothers don’t keep them at home where they belong. Some librarians may choose to be so wishy- washy and turn their libraries into nursing-homes and kindergartens, but as long as I’m in charge, the Gopher Prairie library is going to be quiet and decent, and the books well-kept!”

Carol saw that the others were listening, waiting for her to be objectionable.She flinched before their dislike. She hastened to smile in agreement with Miss Villets, to glance publicly at her wrist-watch, to warble that is was ‘so late- have to hurry home-husband-such a nice party-maybe you were right about the maids, prejudiced because Bea is so nice-such perfectly divine angel’s food, Mrs. Haycock must give me the recipe-good-by, such happy party——’

She walked home. She reflected. ”It was my fault. I was touchy. And I opposed them so much. Only—- I can’t! I can’t be one of them if I must damn all the maids toiling in filthy kitchens, all the ragged hungry children. And these women are to be my arbiters, the rest of my life!”’

Well! That was trying.

Like Carol, I would probably leave out the angel food cake too- I’m more of a pound cake person myself. But here are two to try. (Scroll to the end to see a 1902 recipe from the The Californian (Salinas, California), which was probably the same kind of recipe Carol encountered at the lunch.)

Angel Food Cake

• 1 1/4 cup sugar

• 1 cup sifted cake flour

  1 cup egg white ( 7 to 8 eggs; however I used liquid egg whites from the grocery store and it was fine and much easier!)

• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla

• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Please note that every recipe says to use an angel food cake pan, so try it without one at your own risk. I did not use one! I used a fluted tube pan, against all instructions, which calls for a straight- sided pan. I don’t think I’ll be making angel food cake often enough to warrant buying a whole new pan, and we are in the middle of a corona virus quarantine so I won’t be getting out to buy one.

It is also important to NOT grease the pan. The batter needs to climb up the sides of the pan to get the cake’s signature height, and it will not grip the sides if the pan has been buttered.

Sift together flour and 1/2 cup sugar. Beat whites until frothy, beat in cream of tartar and flavorings, beat until tips of fold turn over SLIGHTLY. Don’t over beat or your cake will be hard and rubbery. Sprinkle remaining sugar 2 tablespoons at a time over the egg whites, and fold in. Try to keep as much air in the batter as possible. Sift flour 4 tablespoons at a time over the egg and fold in until all flour has been combined. Slide gently into a 9 inch tube pan. Cut through the batter with a spatula to break up air bubbles. Bake at 350 for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on your oven. This is a cake you need to watch carefully. (Much like the ladies at the luncheon!) It should be springy and not too dark.

When done, turn the cake upside down on a cooling tray. The cake must cool completely while it is upside down, in order to keep its height. You’ll need to use a fine-bladed knife to cut around the edges of the cake to get it to release from the pan. Work carefully! It is very delicate.

Don’t over beat the egg whites. This is all the lift you need.

I did get one bubble in my cake, but that’s ok because…

…you’re going to cover it in powdered sugar anyway!

This had a beautiful high airy crumb. I did have seconds even though I’m not an angel food cake person.

You can also serve this with a fruit sauce on top. I hope you enjoy it more than Carol did.

I heated up a little raspberry jam with heavy cream for a nice fruit sauce.

From 1902. This is pretty complicated- maybe another time!