Like many Indians, I struggle to see the point of peaches. Yes, they look lovely, golden-red, suggestively curved and with that faint fuzz, but the taste of the varieties we usually get here is more sour than sweet. And why eat peaches when you can get mangoes? But people in temperate climates adore them. “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?” TS Eliot’s lovelorn J Alfred Prufrock asked. “Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring and because it has fresh peaches in it,” Alice Walker wrote. Then there’s the peach scene in Call Me By Your Name (2017). All of which left me wondering how these feelings would have been much more intense with mangoes.
It’s true that peaches are better for cooking. I have never tasted a mango dessert that hasn’t seemed like a waste of perfectly ripe fruit. Mango jam destroys the fruit’s flavour, but in peach jam, the acid wonderfully balances the sugar. Peaches are also good gently poached with sugar and a few cloves, preserved with brandy or baked in a pie. Frustrated with some dull peaches, I asked Urmila, who cooks for us, to use them for sansav , the Goa fruit curry made with sour mangoes or pineapples. The peach sansav was amazing, which reinforces my point: Mangoes are perfect, but peaches need help.
But then, I bite a flat peach and my certainties collapse. These are also called Saturn peaches, UFO peaches or doughnut peaches because of their bulbous disc shape. Another name came from a vendor in Mumbai’s Crawford Market, where I first discovered them years ago. “ Woh jalebi peach dena ,” he called to his helper. That really captured their startling juiciness, an almost shocking gush of tangy sweetness that floods your mouth when you bite it. Your next feeling is: “Why aren’t all peaches like this?” Most articles about flat peaches ask this question, with no clear answer. I recently found them in Goa, which is a hopeful sign that they are spreading, but it still seems slow for such splendid fruit. They are imported and very expensive, but when people pay huge amounts for a trendy dessert, like the socalled Dubai chocolate bar, they could pay for something as good (and healthy) as flat peaches.
Indians, it’s true, are unwilling to pay high prices for fruits other than mangoes, but flat peaches are worth it. They are certainly better than other novelty fruits like dragonfruit or kiwi, which are also strikinglooking, but have no great taste.
The scarcity of flat peaches is strange because the Chinese have grown them for centuries. In Edward Shafer’s The Golden Peaches of Samarkand , he studies the Chinese trade in exotic fruits: “Twice in the seventh century, the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches to the Chinese court.” These were round, but later texts refer to flat ones called pai pien tau or ‘peento peaches’. A US Bureau of Plant Industry bulletin from 1911 notes several excellent varieties, with red, yellow and white flesh, but laments the “great difficulty in shipping bud wood of peaches…” Flat peaches are finallysuccessfully grown outside China, but for the fruit trade, that’s not enough. What also matters is the ability to last well in transport and shops. The real secret to the success of Alphonso mangoes isn’t just taste, but also their thick skin. Flat peaches were fragile, but recent breeding efforts have improved this. The growth of refrigerated transport, capable of handling delicate produce, has also helped.
Peaches are hand-picked and Western countries are cracking down on the migrant labour that does most of this work. I recently heard of US fruit farmers switching to nuts, which are easily mechanically harvested. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for Indian hill farmers here. Less wedded to existing varieties and with better access to labour, could we start producing these truly perfect peaches?
It’s true that peaches are better for cooking. I have never tasted a mango dessert that hasn’t seemed like a waste of perfectly ripe fruit. Mango jam destroys the fruit’s flavour, but in peach jam, the acid wonderfully balances the sugar. Peaches are also good gently poached with sugar and a few cloves, preserved with brandy or baked in a pie. Frustrated with some dull peaches, I asked Urmila, who cooks for us, to use them for sansav , the Goa fruit curry made with sour mangoes or pineapples. The peach sansav was amazing, which reinforces my point: Mangoes are perfect, but peaches need help.
But then, I bite a flat peach and my certainties collapse. These are also called Saturn peaches, UFO peaches or doughnut peaches because of their bulbous disc shape. Another name came from a vendor in Mumbai’s Crawford Market, where I first discovered them years ago. “ Woh jalebi peach dena ,” he called to his helper. That really captured their startling juiciness, an almost shocking gush of tangy sweetness that floods your mouth when you bite it. Your next feeling is: “Why aren’t all peaches like this?” Most articles about flat peaches ask this question, with no clear answer. I recently found them in Goa, which is a hopeful sign that they are spreading, but it still seems slow for such splendid fruit. They are imported and very expensive, but when people pay huge amounts for a trendy dessert, like the socalled Dubai chocolate bar, they could pay for something as good (and healthy) as flat peaches.
Indians, it’s true, are unwilling to pay high prices for fruits other than mangoes, but flat peaches are worth it. They are certainly better than other novelty fruits like dragonfruit or kiwi, which are also strikinglooking, but have no great taste.
The scarcity of flat peaches is strange because the Chinese have grown them for centuries. In Edward Shafer’s The Golden Peaches of Samarkand , he studies the Chinese trade in exotic fruits: “Twice in the seventh century, the kingdom of Samarkand sent formal gifts of fancy yellow peaches to the Chinese court.” These were round, but later texts refer to flat ones called pai pien tau or ‘peento peaches’. A US Bureau of Plant Industry bulletin from 1911 notes several excellent varieties, with red, yellow and white flesh, but laments the “great difficulty in shipping bud wood of peaches…” Flat peaches are finallysuccessfully grown outside China, but for the fruit trade, that’s not enough. What also matters is the ability to last well in transport and shops. The real secret to the success of Alphonso mangoes isn’t just taste, but also their thick skin. Flat peaches were fragile, but recent breeding efforts have improved this. The growth of refrigerated transport, capable of handling delicate produce, has also helped.
Peaches are hand-picked and Western countries are cracking down on the migrant labour that does most of this work. I recently heard of US fruit farmers switching to nuts, which are easily mechanically harvested. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for Indian hill farmers here. Less wedded to existing varieties and with better access to labour, could we start producing these truly perfect peaches?
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