Pêches Gratinées

Pêches Gratinées (peaches beneath a lightly browned almond covering) teach a simple law: cover the fruit completely. A bare patch loses its syrup in the upper heat and turns hard before the Pralin colours; a continuous covering protects the peach while becoming delicately crisp and pale hazelnut above.

The source sends the cook to Abricots Gratinés (No. 2554), assuming that stiff stewed apple or semolina, poached fruit, and Pralin à Condé already wait in the pastry station. That separate station work is brigade scaffolding, and it can go. Prepare the three components in sequence, scale them to one shallow household dish, and preserve what is the dish: a full inch of firm foundation, syrup-poached fruit, complete Pralin coverage, and only slight colouring. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The source calls for oven colouring rather than demanding a salamander, so the upper third of a hot home oven is the faithful equivalent; the broiler is merely a last, watchful nudge if the covering remains pale. Keep the apple bed stiff enough to hold the peaches, but the step that decides everything is the final covering: no peach should show before the dish meets the heat.