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Life Hereafter
The Rise and Decline of a Tradition

Paul Crittenden
Life Hereafter
 Paul Crittenden

Life Hereafter
The Rise and Decline of a Tradition
Paul Crittenden
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
University of Sydney
Camperdown, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-54278-8    ISBN 978-3-030-54279-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54279-5

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
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The Christian … often refrains from thinking about his destiny after death,
because he is beginning to encounter questions in his mind to which he is
afraid of having to reply, questions such as: “Is there really anything after
death? Does anything remain of us after we die? Is it nothingness that is
before us?”
From Letter on Certain Questions concerning Eschatology, Sacred
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 17 May 1979 (Rome)
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
References   7

2 God, Creation, and the Biblical Moral Order  9

Creation and Covenants   9
From the Patriarchs of Israel to the Fathers of the Church  17
References  25

3 From Sheol to the Resurrection of the Dead 27

The Afterlife: From Genesis to the New Testament  27
The Invention of Satan and His Kingdom of Darkness  40
References  54

4 Greek Themes: From Homer to Plato and Aristotle 57

Poets and Presocratics  57
Plato and Aristotle: A Dispute About Body and Soul  67
References  84

5 Salvation or Damnation: From Paul to Augustine 85

Origen: Universal Salvation  88
Augustine: Freedom, Original Sin, Predestination, and
Pelagianism  92
References 115

vii
viii CONTENTS

6 Thomas Aquinas: Body and Soul117

Platonism: The Soul as Subsistent, Immortal, Created by God 119
Aristotelianism: The Soul as Form of the Body 131
References 143

7 Thomas Aquinas: Life in the World to Come145

The Salvation of Souls 147
Bodily Resurrection and Judgement: Reward and Punishment 154
References 180

8 Eschatology: From Dante to the Secular Age181

The Reformation Era: Disputed Authority 183
Ethics, Religion, and Practical Reason in Modernity 188
References 211

9 Eschatology Now: The Catholic Case215

A Crisis in Eschatology 219
A Traditional Church Response 236
References 264

10 Last Things267
Biblical Testimony and Philosophical Queries 267
Faith and the Limits of Knowledge: Kierkegaard and Socrates 273
References 283

Bibliography285

Index297
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In his study After Lives, John Casey notes that the once vibrant Christian
belief in the afterlife declined rapidly in the second half of the twentieth
century, particularly among members of the Catholic Church:

The Roman Catholic Church preserved the orthodox teaching on heaven

and hell with energy and rigor until the Second Vatican Council (1962–65),
after which the deliquescence of serious belief in damnation (heaven
remained an attractive, if vague, possibility) was astonishingly rapid.
Although the doctrines remained officially in place, they were played down
and lost most of the resonance they used to have with the faithful. (John
Casey, After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009, 1).

This reflection is linked with a discussion of the most famous modern

evocation of hell in Father Arnall’s sermon in James Joyce’s A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Joyce’s treatment of the topic, Casey
observes, is an exercise in irony. The declamation of the traditional belief
in all its lurid detail works its effect on the young Stephen Dedalus. But
Joyce transforms its significance by portraying the experience as an epiph-
anic moment to be lived through and outgrown in Stephen’s journey
towards becoming a creative writer. In Casey’s words, ‘a sense of the infi-
nite significance of choice that life imposes upon one has been transformed
into creative literature from a religious tradition that continues to feed
Joyce’s imagination’ (Casey, 10). What remains once the religious belief is

© The Author(s) 2021 1

P. Crittenden, Life Hereafter,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54279-5_1
2 P. CRITTENDEN

set aside—or transcended—is the importance of self-judgement in

human life.
The task of choosing a way of life consists fundamentally in an overall
moral commitment.1 That consists in getting clear about the standards by
which one thinks and acts especially in relation to others. Belief in the
afterlife once served as the primary focus for that choice—as in the New
Testament teaching about the folly of seeking to gain the whole world
only to forfeit one’s life (Matthew 16:26). The awesome prospect of
judgement following one’s death and the general judgement of mankind
at ‘the end of the world’ was once a common theme at parish missions or
school retreats. The custom, as depicted at Joyce’s Belvedere College, has
largely disappeared, no more than the relic of a past age. Self-judgement
in respect of moral virtue nonetheless remains significant in human life.
Towards the end of his trial, Socrates gave voice to this in declaring that
‘the unexamined life is not worth living’.2 For this one needs to have a
sense of what moral virtue involves, but no less importantly, to care for it.
With religious belief or without it, self-judgement—the practice of living
thoughtfully, examining one’s life—is a fundamental dimension of living
well in a moral sense.
In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the focus of my study, the idea of the
afterlife emerged in connection with belief in God and the necessity of liv-
ing a morally good life in obedience to his commandments. This was
grounded especially in the conception of God’s power as creator and giver
of life, his providence, holiness, and moral goodness. My consideration
will begin therefore with an account of the conception of God and his
special relationship to human beings as envisaged in the Hebrew Bible and
subsequently in the New Testament (Chap. 2).
The idea of the afterlife turns on the possibility that the whole person
or some significant element of human existence—in the form of some level
of consciousness—survives bodily death. This is the topic for consider-
ation in Chap. 3. For the greater part of the Hebrew Bible, the afterlife is
associated with Sheol, a place of shadowy, futile existence in the under-
world, to which the soul as breath or spirit departs following death.
Subsequently, in the second century BCE, in a time of oppression, the
Book of Daniel and related apocalyptic writings proclaimed a new vision
of life beyond death. The Maccabean-led war against the rule of King
Antiochus IV yielded the prospect of cosmic upheaval and a day of reckon-
ing for the oppressors of God’s faithful people. On that day of judgement,
God would restore the righteous dead to new life and punish, once and for
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

all, the enemies of his people. The idea of the resurrection of the dead
took definite shape in Judaism in this way, becoming in time a founda-
tional belief of Christianity.
The Devil Satan, so central to the New Testament and Christian teach-
ing, is a figure strangely absent from the Hebrew Bible, although the term
‘satan’ appears there mainly in the generic sense of ‘adversary’ or ‘accuser’.
The transformation of this idea into the Devil appeared originally in non-­
biblical apocalyptic texts, again from around the mid-second century
BCE. By New Testament times, the Devil and fellow demons constitute
the Kingdom of Darkness, locked in battle with God’s Kingdom of Light,
exercising power for a time, but doomed to ultimate defeat. This great
struggle constitutes the basic framework of the Gospels and the consum-
ing focus of the Book of Revelation. The fundamental teaching in this
setting, expressed first in the letters of Paul, is that Jesus Christ, by his
death and resurrection, has redeemed humanity from the power of Satan
and opened the door to eternal life. The vision is of wars in heaven and on
earth, the defeat of Satan and his armies, the second coming of Christ, the
resurrection of the dead, and the final judgement in which the just inherit
heaven and evildoers are cast forever ‘into the eternal fire prepared for the
devil and his angels’ (Matt 25:41).3
Christianity emerged in a world shaped by Hellenic thought and cul-
ture with its long tradition of poets and philosophers going back to Homer
and Hesiod (around the eighth century BCE). Chapter 4 will be con-
cerned with early Greek thought about the origin of the world, the gods,
and human destiny as conceived originally by the poets and subsequently
by a line of early philosophers, leading in the fifth and fourth centuries to
the towering figures of Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s account of the creation
of the world, his reflections on the immortality of the soul, and his explo-
ration of the themes of reward and punishment in the afterlife were par-
ticularly influential in the first centuries of Christianity. Aristotle’s major
influence came later with the re-discovery of his writings just as universi-
ties came to birth in the Middle Ages.
Christian conceptions of the afterlife were linked from the beginning
with debates about salvation and damnation in relation to divine predesti-
nation and grace. These will be topics for consideration in Chap. 5, espe-
cially in the works of Augustine of Hippo. Origen of Alexandria, a major
third-century theologian, maintained that all sinners, the fallen angels
included, would eventually be saved following a process of purification in
the afterlife. His view was roundly rejected, however, especially in the
4 P. CRITTENDEN

West, with Augustine its chief critic. Augustine’s very different views of
who could be saved and his account of the sufferings of the damned are
set out at length in his monumental work The City of God. Discussion
otherwise relates to his controversial views on original sin, free will, grace,
and predestination in response to the more liberal views of the Pelagians.
The focus moves in Chap. 6 from Augustine at the end of the classical
era to Thomas Aquinas, renowned philosopher–theologian in the mid-­
thirteenth century. The first major topic concerns his complex arguments,
philosophical but to a theological end, in defence of the subsistence of the
soul and its immortality. But he then seeks to combine this Platonist stand-
point with an Aristotelian-based account of the unity of body and soul. I
will argue that these several arguments are all problematic. Notwithstanding
criticism by Duns Scotus and others, his account gained official Church
approval in the course of time, especially at the fifth Lateran Council in
1513 just before the Reformation changed the face of Western Christianity.
Aquinas’ account of the soul in the afterlife, the happiness of the blessed
in the vision of God, and the suffering and misery of the damned in hell
are topics for consideration in Chap. 7. In his treatise on the last things, he
analysed in detail the apocalyptic depictions of the New Testament—
prophecies of upheaval, the resurrection of the dead, Christ’s return in
glory, the last judgement, and the definitive renewal of creation. In exam-
ining his account, I will be particularly concerned to assess his argument
that the eternal punishment of the damned is consistent with God’s justice
and mercy. Aquinas’ theology of the afterlife stands as a comprehensive
structured account of how Christian belief about ‘the last things’ had
developed over the centuries (including the medieval belief in purgatory).
From an early point, his eschatology served as the approved version of
Catholic teaching, a standing it retained until the second half of the twen-
tieth century.
My concern in Chap. 8 is to trace the status of belief in the afterlife in
the centuries after Aquinas from Dante to the Reformation era and the
emergence of the modern world. Notwithstanding the great changes
wrought by the Reformation, the different Christian Churches, Lutheran,
Calvinist, and Catholic generally maintained the traditional eschatological
teaching except for specific medieval additions. What was set in train more
deeply was a transition from the (enchanted) mind-set of the Middle Ages
to the (enlightened) outlook of the modern world, beginning in the
reform of religion and extending in time to social and political change.
One pervasive aspect of this was a growing sense of individual autonomy
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

and a new moral order as part of a gradual move away from religious
authority towards secularisation. Charles Taylor has charted these devel-
opments in his work A Secular Age, a comprehensive survey and critique
of a self-sufficing humanism in the Western world.
For Taylor, this transition was associated critically with the turn to
humanistic ethics—that is, ethics based in one way or another on a human
framework of reason and experience without reference to a transcendent
source. This characteristic modern conception of ethics, he argues, consti-
tutes the Achilles’ heel of the secular age. Without belief in God and the
promise of the afterlife, the world is bereft of the means to provide ade-
quately for human needs in this life and without hope for fulfilment in the
world to come. While Taylor’s critique of modernity is persuasive in many
respects, I will argue that his appeal to a transcendent basis for ethics is
unsuccessful on its own terms and his critique of reason-based ethics
unconvincing.
How are traditional eschatological themes conceived in mainstream
Christianity in the contemporary world? In discussing this topic in Chap. 9,
I will be concerned primarily with the case of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) brought change in many aspects
of Church teaching and practice. But it had virtually nothing to say about
‘the last things’, or nothing new. In challenging the authoritarianism of the
papal magisterium, however, it opened up room for theologians to think
more freely about traditional teachings. Within a decade, concerns about
‘the last things’ had come into question, ‘a crisis of tradition’ in Joseph
Ratzinger’s assessment, enough to elicit a letter from the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith reiterating traditional teaching. In essence that
teaching presents the afterlife in two phases: first, one’s soul leaves the body
at death, appears before God for judgement, and is assigned to heaven or
hell for eternity or for a time to purgatory; then, at some unknown future
time, the bodies of the dead will be raised, Christ will return in glory to
exercise a last universal judgement, this world will pass away, and God’s
creation will be renewed forever.
The new idea that concerned Church authorities above all was the pro-
posal by the theologian Gisbert Greshake that resurrection takes place at
the moment of death, not on the lines of the traditional idea of resurrec-
tion, but in an entirely different process. Appealing to the biblical concep-
tion of the unity of body and soul, Greshake proposed that in the course
of a lifetime, bodiliness is interiorised and transformed into an abiding
perfection of the human spiritual subject. In the ensuing debate in the
6 P. CRITTENDEN

1970s, the Regensburg Theology Professor Joseph Ratzinger emerged as

the leading critic of the novel idea and defender of traditional ‘two-phased’
eschatology.4 Alarmed by growing support for the Greshake thesis in the
1980s, the International Theological Commission, presided over by (now)
Cardinal Ratzinger, released a document ‘Some Current Questions in
Eschatology’ in 1992. A significant intervention, its main burden was to
reject resurrection in death and reaffirm a realist conception of the risen
body on the lines that we will rise ‘in this flesh in which we now live’.
Eschatology has subsequently continued as a topic of concern for recent
pontiffs. Aware of the decline in belief, particularly belief in hell, Pope
John Paul II gave a series of lectures on heaven, hell, and purgatory in
1999. While insisting on the reality of these states, he explained that much
of the language used to describe them is metaphorical, symbolical, or figu-
rative. Is there anyone actually in hell? John Paul II says that Satan and the
other fallen angels are definitely there, but as for the fate of human beings,
we do not know. He thus tempered some of the rhetoric of traditional
teaching about hell, but not the envisaged reality of the state of eternal
suffering in hell.
His successor Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, also discussed the
afterlife, notably in his letter, ‘We are Saved in Hope’ (2007), a sustained
attempt to argue that justice and hope for the world now and in the ulti-
mate future depends on God. His argument bears a resemblance to Charles
Taylor’s view that only an ethics and faith open to divine transcendence
can lead to human fulfilment in this life and the next. Hell, he supposes, is
reserved only for the most depraved human beings, people who choose to
reject God radically in their heartless and cruel treatment of others. God’s
judgement should be seen, therefore, as an image of human hope for ulti-
mate justice. Over the past 50 years, Church authorities have moved to a
more restrained teaching regarding hell and its punishments all too easily,
welcome as the development might be. But in doing so, they have not
looked critically at the dubious character of the ancient apocalyptic texts
on which the doctrine came to be formulated in the first place. Nor have
they succeeded in showing that eternal punishment, albeit conceived as
self-imposed by sinners, is compatible with divine justice.
Finally, in Chap. 10, I will be concerned with Søren Kierkegaard’s con-
ception of religious faith as similar to the idea of Socratic wisdom. True
wisdom, Socrates decided, lies in the search for understanding conjoined
with not claiming to know things that you do not know. In this context,
Kierkegaard proposes that ‘Socratic ignorance gives expression to the
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

objective uncertainty attaching to the truth’ professed in faith. I will

explore the connection to which Kierkegaard refers by considering
Socrates’ reflections on death and what might happen afterwards, follow-
ing his condemnation to death on a specious charge of religious impiety.
My approach to the many issues discussed in this critical-historical con-
sideration of the Christian eschatological tradition reflects an inside/out-
side standpoint. For many years, I have stood apart from the tradition of
Christian (Catholic) belief in which I grew up. But as a philosopher
engaged in teaching and research, I have retained an abiding interest in
religious belief and theological inquiry. In writing about topics in religion,
in this work and elsewhere, I have sought to consider the issues in a spirit
that is both critical and sympathetic. Here the critique explores and chal-
lenges the eschatological tradition on evidential, ethical, and philosophical
grounds.

Notes
1. Aristotle says that to live happily and well we need appropriate measures of
wisdom, virtue, and pleasure, and to that end ‘we enjoin everyone that has
the power to live according to his own choice to set up for himself some
object for a noble life to aim at … with reference to which he will conduct
his actions, since not to have one’s life organized in view of some end is an
indication of much folly’ (Eudemian Ethics, 1214b7–10).
2. Plato, Apology (Socrates’ Defence) in The Dialogues of Plato, 5 vols., transl.
by B. Jowett, vol. 2, 36a6–8, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931.
Among contemporary thinkers on this theme, see Hannah Arendt The Life
of the Mind, New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1978.
3. Biblical passages throughout are cited from Holy Bible, New Revised
Standard Version, London: William Collins, 2018 (NRSV). Abbreviations
for component books of the Bible are as listed in NRSV.
4. See Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, transl. by Michael
Waldstein, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2007. The work appeared in German in 1977; an English translation, with
several new appendices, was published in 1988.

References
Arendt, H. (1978). The Life of the Mind. New York: Harcourt.
Aristotle. (1985). Eudemian Ethics, (1214b7–10). The Complete Works of Aristotle:
The Revised Oxford Translation (J. Barnes, Ed., 2 vols.). Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
8 P. CRITTENDEN

Casey, J. (2009). After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Plato. (1931). The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd ed., 5 vols, transl. B. Jowett. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Plato. (1961). The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters (E. Hamilton
& H. Cairns, Ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.
Ratzinger, J. (2007). Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (M. Waldstein, Trans.).
Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.
 CHAPTER 2

God, Creation, and the Biblical Moral Order

Creation and Covenants

God appears in the opening words of the Bible as the powerful creator of
the heavens and the earth, giving form to shapeless matter shrouded in
darkness and surrounded by deep primaeval waters. His creative act takes
the form of effortless commands beginning with the dramatic exclamation
‘Let there be light …’ culminating in ‘Let us make humankind in our
image, according to our likeness’ (Genesis 1:3–26). Along with his power
in bringing the world into being, there is a profound moral dimension to
the work, for God blesses what he has made and declares it very good. In
creating human beings in his own image, God created them male and
female. Inevitably, the supreme being, who is neither male nor female, is
spoken of in masculine terms. Creation, divine power, the moral order,
and human beings made in God’s image, all bear significantly on the even-
tual emergence of the belief in the afterlife in Judaism and Christianity.
The story is in effect a cosmogony, a myth or theory of the origin of the
universe, a familiar genre in the ancient world around the eighth to the
sixth century BCE. It is constructed on the basis of elements borrowed
from mythology in the Ancient Near East, but with traces also, perhaps
coincidental, of early Greek cosmogonies.1 The Genesis story is an attempt
to satisfy the longstanding human interest in explaining how the earth and
the heavens came to be and determining the place of human beings with
‘dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air and over
every living thing that moves upon the earth’ (Gen 1:28). Is this

© The Author(s) 2021 9

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10 P. CRITTENDEN

dominion a claim to sovereign power and ownership or an affirmation of

human responsibility for the care of the earth and its inhabitants? Mythical
stories may be read in different ways.
This account of the world’s beginning is coupled with a second cre-
ation story concerned more immediately with human origins in the myth
of the formation of the first human being, an adult male, from the dust—
the image of God as a potter—and subsequently of an adult female, ‘a
helper as his partner’, called Woman because, in the man’s words, ‘out of
Man this one was taken’ (Gen 2:23). Inevitably, in the cultures of its ori-
gin, and for long afterwards, the relative status of male and female is writ-
ten into the story, serving as further confirmation of the established order
at the time it was composed. The life of Adam and Eve, the ‘first’ couple,
is set initially in the idyllic conditions of a garden planted by God himself
‘in Eden, in the east’. It is a garden with a river flowing through and many
trees, two of which bear peculiar names: the tree of life and the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.
In this quite different story of origins—even the name for God is dif-
ferent2—the emphasis falls specifically on God as the maker of human
beings and ultimate authority for the way they should conduct their lives.
This is encapsulated specifically in Adam and Eve being accorded freedom
in the garden, but subject to the threat-filled, tantalising, condition that
they should not eat the fruit of ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil’. This might imply that they are to remain innocent of such knowl-
edge. Yet, the prohibition constitutes the prototypical biblical morality in
the form of obedience to the divine command that they not eat the forbid-
den fruit. In this setting, the penalty for infringement is exile and death.
What follows is a succinct and intriguing story of disobedience and its
consequences involving the subtle serpent, the woman, the man, and
finally God. In a swift trial, the divine judge pronounces sentence on the
guilty parties, observing enigmatically that the man has become ‘like one
of us, knowing good and evil’ and must therefore be expelled, for ‘now, he
might reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live
forever’ (Gen 3:22). So God drove them out of Eden, condemning them
to a life of hard labour ending in death.
As the story of the original family unfolds in the harsh world outside,
social-familial relations break down in the first generation. Cain becomes
angry at being overlooked when his younger brother Abel found favour
with God. Ignoring divine counsel, he ‘rose up against his brother Abel,
and killed him’ (Gen 4:8). No more is heard of Cain except that he went
22 P. CRITTENDEN

Origen also took a keen interest in Philo’s thought. In keeping with

Philo, he affirmed God’s transcendence, and conceived the Logos and the
Spirit as divine but subordinate powers through whom God, the Father of
all, acts in the world. Specifically, he argued that if the Church was to pre-
serve the fundamental biblical commitment to monotheism, it was neces-
sary to uphold the supreme status of God the Father. This too reflected a
Philonian standpoint in the sense that ‘Philo’s doctrine of powers allowed
him to maintain both the oneness of God despite his many names and
epithets, and the transcendence of God despite his action on the world’.15
In this, as in some other matters, the later Church did not agree with
Origen. From the fourth and fifth century, the conciliar-defined doctrines
of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ have constituted the heart of
Christian belief and practice in East and West. Clearly, the conception of
the one God embracing three distinct persons is greatly different from the
God of the patriarchs and prophets of Israel. Nonetheless, there is an
underlying continuity in the line of development that drew on biblical and
Hellenic sources in the manner of Philo in the early centuries of Christianity.
Paul marked the transition from old to new covenant by affirming that
God is no longer the God of the Jews only, but of Gentiles also. This was
a significant development advanced by Paul’s own mission and the spread
of Christianity throughout the known world. The aspiration to universal
status came to be marked quite quickly, however, by a new form of exclu-
sivism. The Church, in effect, came to see itself as replacing Israel as the
people of God.16 In this exchange, baptism ‘into Christ … into his death’,
in conjunction with belief, replaced the sign of circumcision and was
declared henceforth as necessary for salvation. Early Christian belief and
practice took different forms in different places. But as the Gospels, Paul’s
letters, and the Acts of the Apostles make clear, there was a relentless insis-
tence from the beginning on right teaching and practice and a readiness to
condemn all who were not of the faith. This manifested itself unhappily in
abiding anti-semitism in the Christian Church, deep hostility towards her-
etics and schismatics, and a sense of unease in the pagan world.
The concern with orthodoxy and the sense of exclusivity came to be
encapsulated in the assertion, ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation’
(Extra ecclesiam nulla salus), a formula associated with Cyprian, bishop of
Carthage, in the mid-third century. Testimony after testimony to this
claim could be found over the centuries. Augustine put the point forth-
rightly, ‘No one can find salvation except in the Catholic Church’
(‘Discourse to the Church at Caesarea’, CSEL, vol. 43). And Fulgentius
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 SALAD OF MIXED SUMMER FRUITS.

Heap a rice-crust-dish quite high with alternate layers of fine fresh

strawberries stripped from the stalks, white and red currants, and
white or red raspberries; strew each layer plentifully with sifted sugar,
and just before the dish is sent to table, pour equally over the top two
wineglassesful of sherry, Madeira, or any other good white wine.
Very thick Devonshire cream may be laid entirely over the fruit,
instead of the wine being mingled with it. Currants by themselves are
excellent prepared in this way, and strawberries also. The fruit
should be gently stirred with a spoon when it is served. Each variety
must be picked with great nicety from the stalks.
 PEACH SALAD.

Pare and slice half a dozen fine ripe peaches, arrange them in a
dish, strew them with pounded sugar, and pour over them two or
three glasses of champagne: other wine may be used, but this is
best. Persons who prefer brandy can substitute it for wine. The
quantity of sugar must be proportioned to the sweetness of the fruit.
 ORANGE SALAD.

Take off the outer rinds, and then strip away entirely the white
inside skin from some fine China oranges; slice them thin, and
remove the seeds, and thick skin of the cores, as this is done; strew
over them plenty of white sifted sugar, and pour on them a glass or
more of brandy: when the sugar is dissolved serve the oranges. In
France ripe pears of superior quality are sometimes sliced up with
the oranges. Powdered sugar-candy used instead of sugar, is an
improvement to this salad; and the substitution of port, sherry, or
Madeira, for the brandy is often considered so. The fruit may be
used without being pared, and a little curaçao or any other liqueur
may be added to the brandy; or this last, when unmixed, may be
burned after it is poured on the oranges.
 TANGERINE ORANGES.

These beautiful little oranges, of which the rinds have a most

peculiar, and to many tastes not a very agreeable flavour, are
remarkably sweet and delicate when in their perfection; but they
come later into the market than the more common varieties of the
orange, and disappear from them sooner. They make a very refined
salad, and also an ornamental rice-crust dish: their cost is somewhat
higher than that of the Malta and St. Michael oranges. There is
another species of this fruit known commonly as the blood-orange
which has many admirers, but it is not we should say greatly superior
to the more abundant kinds usually served at our tables.
 PEACHES IN BRANDY.

(Rotterdam Receipt.)

Prepare and stew some fine full-flavoured peaches by the receipt

of page 459, but with two ounces more of sugar to the half pint of
water; when they are tender put them, with their syrup, into glass or
new stone jars, which they should only half fill; and when they are
quite cold pour in white, or very pale, French brandy to within an inch
and a half of the brims: a few peach or apricot kernels can be added
to them. The jars must be corked down.
 BRANDIED MORELLA CHERRIES.

Let the cherries be ripe, freshly gathered, and the finest that can
be had; cut off half the length of the stalks, and drop them gently into
clean dry quart bottles with wide necks; leave in each sufficient
space for four ounces of pounded white sugar-candy (or of brown, if
better liked); fill them up entirely with the best French brandy, and
cork them closely: the fruit will not shrivel if thus prepared. A few
cherry, or apricot kernels, or a small portion of cinnamon, can be
added when they are considered an improvement.
 BAKED COMPÔTE OF APPLES.

(Our little lady’s receipt.)

Put into a wide Nottingham jar, with a cover, two quarts of golden
pippins, or of the small apple which resembles them in appearance,
called the orange pippin (this is very plentiful in the county of Kent),
pared and cored, but without being divided; strew amongst them
some small strips of very thin fresh lemon-rind, throw on them,
nearly at the top, half a pound of good Lisbon sugar, and set the jar,
with the cover tied on, for some hours, or for a night, into a very slow
oven. The apples will be extremely good, if not too quickly baked:
they should remain entire, but be perfectly tender, and clear in
appearance. Add a little lemon-juice when the season is far
advanced.
Apples, 2 quarts; rind, quite small lemon; sugar, 1/2 lb.: 1 night in
slow oven; or some hours baking in a very gentle one.
Obs.—These apples may be served hot as a second course dish;
or cold, with a boiled custard poured round or over them. They will
likewise answer admirably to fill Gabrielle’s pudding, or a vol-au-vent
à la crême.
 DRIED NORFOLK BIFFINS.

The Norfolk biffin is a hard and very red apple, the flesh of the true
kind being partially red as well as the skin. It is most excellent when
carefully dried; and much finer we should say when left more juicy
and but partly flattened, than it is when prepared for sale. Wipe the
apples, arrange them an inch or two apart, and place them in a very
gentle oven until they become so much softened as to yield easily to
sufficient pressure to give them the form of small cakes of less than
an inch thick. They must be set several times into the oven to
produce this effect, as they must be gradually flattened, and must
not be allowed to burst: a cool brick oven is best suited to them.
 NORMANDY PIPPINS.

To one pound of the apples, put one quart of water and six ounces
of sugar; let them simmer gently for three hours, or more should they
not be perfectly tender. A few strips of fresh lemon-peel and a very
few cloves are by some persons considered agreeable additions to
the syrup.
Dried Normandy pippins, 1 lb.; water, 1 quart; sugar, 6 oz.; 3 to 4
hours.
Obs.—These pippins, if stewed with care, will be converted into a
rich confection: but they will be very good and more refreshing with
less sugar. They are now exceedingly cheap, and may be converted
into excellent second course dishes at small expense. Half a pound,
as they are light and swell much in the stewing, will be sufficient to
serve at once. Rinse them quickly with cold water, and then soak
them for an hour in the pan in which they are to be stewed, in a quart
of fresh water; place them by the side of the stove to heat gradually,
and when they begin to soften add as much sugar as will sweeten
them to the taste: they require but a small portion. Lemon-rind can
be added to them at pleasure. We have many receipts for other
ways of preparing them, to which we cannot now give place here. It
answers well to bake them slowly in a covered jar. They may be
served hot in a border of rice.
 STEWED PRUNEAUX DE TOURS, OR TOURS DRIED PLUMS.

These plums, which resemble in form small dried Norfolk biffins,

make a delicious compôte: they are also excellent served dry. In
France they are stewed until tender in equal parts of water, and of
the light red wine of the country, with about four ounces of sugar to
the pound of fruit: when port wine is used for them a smaller
proportion of it will suffice. The sugar should not be added in stewing
any dried fruits until they are at least half-done, as they will not
soften by any means so easily in syrup as in unsweetened liquid.
Dried plums, 1 lb.; water, 1/2 pint, and light claret, 1/2 pint, or
water, 1/4 pint, and port wine, 1/4 pint: 1-1/2 hour. Sugar, 4 oz.: 2
hours, or more.
Obs.—Common French plums are stewed in the same way with or
without wine. A little experience will teach the cook the exact quantity
of liquid and of sugar which they require.
 TO BAKE PEARS.

Wipe some large sound iron pears, arrange them on a dish with
the stalk end upwards, put them into the oven after the bread is
withdrawn, and let them remain all night. If well baked, they will be
excellent, very sweet, and juicy, and much finer in flavour than those
which are stewed or baked with sugar: the bon chrétien pear also is
delicious baked thus.
 STEWED PEARS.

Pare, cut in halves, and core a dozen fine pears, put them into a
close shutting stewpan with some thin strips of lemon-rind, half a
pound of sugar in lumps, as much water as will nearly cover them,
and should a very bright colour be desired, a dozen grains of
cochineal, bruised, and tied in a muslin; stew the fruit as gently as
possible, four or five hours, or longer should it not be perfectly
tender. Wine is sometimes added both to stewed pears and to baked
ones. If put into a covered jar, well tied down and baked for some
hours, with a proper quantity of liquid and sugar, they will be very
good.
 BOILED CHESTNUTS.

Make a slight incision in the outer skin only, of each chestnut, to

prevent its bursting, and when all are done, throw them into plenty of
boiling water, with about a dessertspoonful of salt to the half gallon.
Some chestnuts will require to be boiled nearly or quite an hour,
others little more than half the time: the cook should try them
occasionally, and as soon as they are soft through, drain them, wipe
them in a coarse cloth, and send them to table quickly in a hot
napkin.
Obs.—The best chestnuts are those which have no internal
divisions: the finest kinds are quite entire when shelled.
 ROASTED CHESTNUTS.

The best mode of preparing these is to roast them, as in Spain, in

a coffee-roaster, after having first boiled them from seven to ten
minutes, and wiped them dry. They should not be allowed to cool,
and will require but from ten to fifteen minutes’ roasting. They may,
when more convenient, be finished over the fire as usual, or in a
Dutch or common oven, but in all cases the previous boiling will be
found an improvement. Never omit to cut the rind of each nut slightly
before it is cooked. Serve the chestnuts very hot in a napkin, and
send salt to table with them.
 ALMOND SHAMROCKS.

(Very good, and very pretty.)

Whisk the white of a very fresh egg to a froth sufficiently solid to
remain standing in high points when dropped from the whisk; work
into it from half to three-quarters of a pound of very fine dry sifted
sugar, or more should it be needed, to bring the mixture to a
consistency in which it can be worked with the fingers. Have ready
some fine Jordan almonds which have been blanched, and
thoroughly dried at the mouth of the oven; roll each of these in a
small portion of the icing until it is equally covered, and of good form;
then lay them on sheets of thick writing paper, placing three together
in the form of the shamrock, or trefoil, with a small bit of sugar
twisted from the centre almond to form the stalk. When all are ready,
set them into a very slow oven for twenty minutes or longer: they
should become quite firm without taking any colour. They make an
excellent and very ornamental dish. To give them flavour and variety,
use for them sugar which has been rasped on the rinds of some
sound lemons, or Seville oranges, or upon citron, and dried before it
is reduced to powder; or add to the mixture a drop of essence of
roses, and a slight colouring of prepared cochineal. A little spinach-
juice will give a beautiful green tint, but its flavour is not very
agreeable. Filbert or pistachio nuts will answer as well as almonds,
iced in this way.
 SMALL SUGAR SOUFFLÉS.

These are made with the same preparation of egg and sugar as
the almond-shamrocks, and may be flavoured and coloured in the
same way. The icing must be sufficiently firm to roll into balls
scarcely larger than a nut: a little sifted sugar should be dusted on
the fingers in making them, but it must not remain on the surface of
the soufflés. They are baked usually in very small round paper
cases, plaited with the edge of a knife, and to give them brilliancy,
the tops are slightly moistened before they are set into the oven, by
passing the finger, or a paste-brush, just dipped in cold water, lightly
over them. Look at them in about a quarter of an hour, and should
they be quite firm to the touch in every part, draw them out; but if not
let them remain longer. They may be baked on sheets of paper, but
will not preserve their form so well.
For 1 white of egg, whisked to a very firm froth, 8 to 10 oz. of sifted
sugar, or more: soufflés, baked in extremely gentle oven, 16 to 30
minutes, or longer if needful.
Obs.—We have confined our receipts here to the most simple
preparations suited to desserts. All the confectionary of the
preceding chapter being appropriate to them (with the exception of
the toffie), as well as various compôtes, clear jellies, and gateaux of
fruit turned from the moulds; and we have already enumerated the
many other dishes of which they may be composed.
 ICES.

There is no real difficulty in making ices

for the table; but for want of the proper
means of freezing them, and of preventing
their being acted on by a too warm
atmosphere afterwards, in many houses it
cannot very easily be accomplished unless
the weather be extremely cold.
A vessel called a freezing-pot, an ice-pail,
a strong wooden mallet, and a copper
spatula, or an ice-spoon, are all that is Ice Pail and Freezer.
positively required for this branch of
confectionary. Suitable moulds for iced
puddings, and imitations of fruit, must be had in addition when
needed.
When the composition which is to be frozen is ready, the rough ice
must be beaten quite small with the mallet, and either mingled
quickly with two or three handsful of powdered saltpetre, or used
with a much larger quantity of salt. The freezing-pot must then be
firmly placed in the centre of the ice, which must be pressed closely
into the vacant space around it until it reaches the top. The cover of
the ice-pot, or freezer, may then be removed, and the preparation to
be iced poured into it. It should then be turned by means of the
handle at the top, quickly backwards and forwards for eight or ten
minutes; then the portion which will have frozen to the inside must be
scraped well from it with the ice-spoon and mingled with the
remainder: without this the mass would be full of lumps instead of
being perfectly smooth as it ought to be. The same process must be
continued until the whole of its contents are uniformly frozen.
The water-ices which are made in such perfection on the
continent, are incomparably superior to the ice-creams, and other
sweet compositions which are usually served in preference to them
here. One or two receipts which we append will serve as guides for
many others, which may easily be compounded with any variety of
fresh summer fruit.[179]
179. The ices for desserts should be moulded in the form of fruit or other shapes
adapted to the purpose; the natural flavour and colouring are then given to
the former, but it is only experienced cooks or confectioners generally who
understand this branch of ice-making, and it is better left to them. All the
necessary moulds may be procured at any good ironmongers, where the
manner of using them would be explained: we can give no more space to the
subject.
Red Currant Ice.—Strip from the stalks and take two pounds
weight of fine ripe currants and half a pound of raspberries; rub them
through a fine sieve, and mingle thoroughly with them sufficient cold
syrup to render the mixture agreeably sweet, and,—unless the pure
flavour of the fruit be altogether preferred,—add the strained juice of
one large or of two small lemons, and proceed at once to freeze the
mixture as above. Currants, 2 lbs.; raspberries, 1/2 lb.; sugar, 3/4 to
1 lb.; boiled for 6 or 8 minutes in 1/2 pint of water and left till quite
cold. (Juice of lemon or lemons at pleasure.)
Strawberry and raspberry water-ices are made in precisely the
same manner.
To convert any of these into English ice-creams, merely mingle the
juice and pulp of the fruit with sufficient pounded sugar to sweeten
them, or with the syrup as above, and then blend with them gradually
from a pint and a half to a quart of fresh sweet cream, and the
lemon-juice or not at choice. The Queen’s Custard, the Currant, and
the Quince or Apple Custard of pages 481 and 482 may all be
converted into good ices with a little addition of cream and sugar;
and so likewise may the Countess Cream of page 472, and the
Bavarian Cream of page 477, by omitting the isinglass from either of
them.
 CHAPTER XXIX.

Syrups, Liqueurs, &c.

Antique Wine Vase.