Pêche Melba — peaches with vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce

Choose four large, ripe but still firm freestone peaches. Wash and peel thinly with a soft-fruit peeler or a small knife, halve, and remove the pits. You need 600 g raw flesh in eight halves. Drizzle with all 15 g lemon juice and keep the liquid in the bottom of the bowl.

In a wide saucepan with a lid, about 24–26 cm across, pour all 250 g water. Add 60 g white sugar and 8 g sugar with real vanilla. Heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves and the liquid gently simmers. Arrange eight halves in one layer, cut sides down, and add all the lemon juice from the bowl.

Cover and cook over low heat for about 8–12 minutes, depending on the ripeness of the peaches. The syrup should barely simmer. Halfway through, gently turn the halves with a wide spoon and baste with the liquid. A thin knife should enter the flesh without resistance, but the fruit should keep its shape. Check very ripe peaches sooner.

Lift the tender halves into a shallow dish with a slotted spoon, arranging them without crushing. Keep all the syrup in the saucepan. Pour any juices that collect under the peaches during initial cooling back into the syrup. Do not set aside any poaching liquid for later: all of it will go into the raspberry sauce.

Boil the syrup without a lid for about 5–10 minutes, until roughly 120 g remains and it thickens slightly. It should stay pale and flow freely from a spoon without caramelizing. If checking the weight, pour it into a heatproof container; do not put the hot saucepan on the scale. Keep the entire reduced quantity.

Pour the syrup into a shallow bowl. Leave the fruit and syrup for about 10 minutes until no longer visibly steaming, then refrigerate separately for about 20 minutes or longer, until completely cool. Do not blend raspberries with hot liquid. Cooling may take longer depending on the dish; keep the ice cream in the freezer.

Wash the raspberries gently, drain well, and weigh 250 g. Put all of them in a tall container, add all the cool syrup and any juice beneath the cooled peaches. Blend briefly into an even fruit sauce and scrape down the sides. Do not strain: all the raspberries and their tiny seeds stay in the dessert.

Prepare four dessert bowls. Arrange two cool peach halves in each and add 60 g vanilla ice cream. Use all eight halves and all 240 g weighed ice cream. Take out the ice cream only when assembling so it does not melt while the other components are prepared.

Divide all the raspberry sauce equally among four bowls, pouring over the peaches and partly over the ice cream. Scrape the remaining sauce from its container to use the full prepared quantity. Serve immediately. One portion is two peach halves, 60 g ice cream, and a quarter of the sauce, approximately 300 g of finished dessert.

If making ahead, refrigerate the cooled peaches and finished raspberry sauce separately in covered containers. Use by the next day at the latest, adding ice cream only just before eating. Do not keep assembled ice cream portions for later; do not refreeze thawed ice cream.