226 THE AMERICAN PEACH ORCHARD 



SHORT CAKE 



One of the good old-fashioned home cookery lux- 

 uries which is never remotely imitated in the res- 

 taurants is the peach shortcake. Now, the wrong 

 way to make a shortcake is to prepare as a basis 

 a sponge cake or some other sweetened substratum 

 of the same general sort. This is what they do in 

 cheap hotels. The right way, and the way they 

 practice on good farms, is to make a batch of dough 

 just as though there were to be biscuits for supper. 

 Sometimes it is made a little shorter, but this is 

 hardly desirable. This dough is baked in square or 

 round baking tins, which ought to be big and gener- 

 ous. 



There should be at least two of these tins of cake 

 baked, and better three. They should be fully baked 

 but with only a very slight browning. When done 

 they are removed to a big platter, and between the 

 layers of unsweetened cake are spread liberal strata 

 of very ripe sweet peaches, peeled, stoned and sliced 

 thin. The fruit stratum is always heavily sweetened 

 with sugar, and may be touched up a bit with nut- 

 meg or other spices if desired. Some rural gour- 

 mets dress their portions with thick yellow cream; 

 other more delicate persons say their stomachs will 

 not stand the treatment. For shortcomings of this 

 sort we recommend 12 active hours a day pick- 

 ing, packing and shipping peaches to market. 



PEACH PIE 



Peach pie is probably the best known way of 

 cooking peaches. Here is a good New England 

 recipe, from the land where they know what pie is : 



Remove skins from peaches. This may be done easily after 

 allowing peaches to stand in boiUng water one minute. Cut 



