ISSUE 29, PEACHES, Part 1: Persipan-the treasure in the Peach Pit

A classic confection ingredient

Persipan—the treasure in the Peach Pit

My brother Richard and I entertained ourselves with experiments when we were kids.  One of them involved whacking peach pits (we usually bought peaches from a roadside stand on the way to Rehobeth Beach) with a hammer to find out what was inside.  Well we found what looked like almonds inside—the peach seeds hidden behind the rough wooden envelope. I liked almonds and popped one into my mouth.  My mother went into full mom panic mode.  I had just self-administered a cyanide death pill.  In the 1960s everyone believed that apple seeds and stone fruit pits were quick ticket to the grave.  Fortunately I had not swallowed the thing and spit it out, preventing the hub-bub of a call to the emergency room, ambulances, and stomach pumping.  I was the sort of 10 year old kid who got irked that I had almost eaten a cool poison and didn’t even know it, so I went to the library and looked it up.  Disappointment: yes it did contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycosie, but in nowhere near a quantity to do me harm.  I would have had to have eaten 80 before my stomach would have needed pumping.  And the toxicity is easily destroyed by heat—blanching the seeds would have made them entirely edible. 

What do I remember about the experience—well the seed smell inviting, and it tasted rather bitter (the cyanide signature).  Not really bitter.  The texture was almond-like.

All of this came to mind after one of my periodic lunches with Glenn Roberts—brainstorming sessions that work through the strangest topics related to food and food restoration.  A mutual friend was making a batch of peach brandy and the question of what to do with pits came up.  Yes—a percentage can be use to impart stone fruit perfume to the batch, but what of the rest?  We knew that another friend, Dan Barbour, had used them to make ice cream a decade ago.  A passing idea.  Was there any American industrial use for peach pits/seeds?  Well aside from a campaign during World War I when the defense department had kids collect pits to be carbonized and used for filtration in gas masks—no.  Glenn asked particularly whether there was any evidence of the creation of marzipan from the almond-like peach seeds.

Persipan Paste

Not it is the U.S. but there certainly was in Europe where Persipan is used in confectionery.  A mix of 40% blanched peach or apricot kernels and 60% sugar it was employed by confectioners in making stollen. It was cheaper than marzipan.  I have a big filed of historic German bakers in the U.S. that I consulted to see whether it had been used as a marzipan substitute—not until the 1980s by one bakery in Springfield, IL.  Small scale.  So that made me wonder whether legislation was inhibiting the harvesting and usage of stone fruit pits.  A friend is looking into that right now. 

There are a hell of a lot of peach pets left over from processing canned peaches in the U.S.  I’m sure there’s a better use for them that being a minor component of particle board.