on peaches, summer's essence

the perfect peach belongs in salads and drinks, baked and grilled, raw, alone

When you bite into a good peach, the skin should break and fall off the fruit. The slurping should make the people around you uncomfortable, a sucking you can’t stop because if you do, liquid will drip down your chin. Your fingers should be so sticky you leaves traces of fruit on your phone and clothes. The juices should splash onto the ground, onto you.

Eating a peach that’s just been picked the day before, one so delicate it could never be sold in a store because it would bruise and burst and shed fuzz like an animal before it ever made it to the fruit bin, transports me. I feel the heat and sunshine. I close my eyes and open them to a childhood of reaching up into a sea of dripping pinkish orange, brushing off bugs and feeling the little hairs on my tongue. I’ve been known to moan, I’ve seen others shut their eyes and mumble into the flesh.

Watching someone eat a really good peach should turn you on.

Peaches are fickle. Leave them out, clustered in a bowl for more than twenty four hours, and the bottoms will grow mold and rot and drip. Put them in the fridge, and the fruity perfume evaporates, the flesh tightens, and the juice loses its sparkle. Cook them into pies or jam, and the sugars will concentrate so hard and fast into a syrup that’s too sweet for more than a few bites, at least for me.

Peaches are varied. The ones we sell in late June and the ones we offer at the beginning of August are not from the same trees, even when their yellow flesh is theoretically identical to our customers. (If you’re new here, I work Saturdays for a farmer who grows many acres of stone fruits). They grow sweeter, deeper, somehow more the essence of peach, as the months go by. The latest season peaches are like those dogs days of August, like the August of Taylor Swift.

If yellow peaches are like the sun, white peaches are ambrosia and perfume and nearly herbal, far more delicate. And then there are white, yellow, and orange donut peaches, small and flat, somehow even peachier than their common round companions, the flesh just a bit firmer, the bite more solid.

three varieties, the donuts in the middle

I landed my Saturday fruit-selling job with a version of these words, explaining the difference between white and yellow peaches to a friend. The farmer, eavesdropping, knew I said it better than he could. “Any chance you want to work here?” he asked me, nearly two years ago, throwing a piece of paper with his phone number. I really did, I loved the peaches that much. I still work there. I’m on year three of selling these babies.

Yellow peaches are best for mixing into yogurt, halving and grilling and drizzling with honey over ice cream, slicing over a bed of cream whipped with creme fraiche and vanilla, and baked into a crunchy oaty crisp.¹ White peaches fall apart too quickly when cooked and lose their delicate flavor when competing for space; they should be enjoyed on their own or mixed with yellow peaches and tomatoes into a salad, drizzled with champagne vinegar, salt, and olive oil and showered with fresh basil. Donut peaches should be eaten as they are.

It should go without saying, but the peaches you will find in the grocery store are not the same fruit under discussion here. Much like the more delicate strawberry, and even the hardy apple, commercial peach varieties have been bred to withstand days of transit without spoiling or bruising, at the sacrifice of flavor and texture. The peaches from farmer’s markets will bruise, mold, break, and rot more violently and immediately than our fastidious culture has taught us to believe should be acceptable. I promise you that the fruit is fine. Any truly nasty parts should be trimmed off and the rest should be eaten as normal.

For those who must follow a recipe while peaching, Stephanie Izard’s peach, tomato, bread, and pistachio salad had made many a full summer meal. This cake, from

Domenica Marchetti

, will be my next peach experiment, perhaps even this evening. I lost all track of time and space when proffered a peach mezcal margarita by a friend of the newsletter on July 4th, though I regret to inform you this friend is such a genius that the words “peach mezcal margarita” are all the recipe he had. Before the summer is up, I plan to try Melissa Clark’s grilled chicken thighs with peaches, as I’m always seeking more savory applications.

Buy some peaches. (If you live in Washington, D.C., buy them from me. I can be found at the Brookland Arts Walk from 9-1 wearing a 78 Acres hat this coming Saturday). Eat them in the sun, eat them over the sink. Close your eyes and let them take you somewhere.

1. This calls for blueberries and is delicious in its original form, but even better when subbed for peaches.