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Peach Compote
Pare the fruit; let it remain whole; put in a porcelain-lined kettle, with sweetened water; boil until quite tender; add to the fruit some cinnamon bark and a few cloves. When tender remove from the kettle with a perforated skimmer and place on your fruit dish. When the syrup has boiled thick pour over the fruit. Little wine added to the peaches while cooking is an improvement. When cold serve with sweet cream.
A plain poached-peach dessert whose success depends almost entirely on not overcooking the fruit. The original leaves the syrup strength to the cook, so that is the first thing to settle.
- "Sweetened water"No proportion is given. A light poaching syrup of about 1 cup sugar to 3 cups water is a common range for stone fruit; more sugar tends to keep the flesh firmer but the syrup will need less reduction later. Use enough liquid to cover the peaches.
- Porcelain-lined kettleThis means an enamelled cast-iron or coated pan, specified because acid fruit reacts with bare iron and with copper. Stainless steel or enamel is the modern equivalent; avoid untreated aluminium, which will dull the colour.
- Paring whole peachesPeaches are easier to skin if you cut a shallow cross at the blossom end, dip them in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then into ice water. The skins slip off without cutting away flesh, which matters when the fruit is to stay whole.
- "Boil until quite tender"This is the hinge. Hold the syrup at a bare simmer rather than a boil, and give ripe peaches 8 to 15 minutes depending on firmness; they are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the centre. A rolling boil splits the skinless fruit and leaves you with a compote of shreds.
- The spicesUse a 2-inch piece of cinnamon bark and four or five whole cloves, and fish them out before serving. Ground spice will cloud the syrup. Adding them partway through, as written, keeps the clove from dominating.
- Reducing the syrupAfter the fruit is lifted out, boil the syrup hard to about a third of its volume, until it coats a spoon. It thickens further as it cools, so stop while it still pours freely.
- The wineAbout 1/2 cup of a white wine, Madeira or sweet sherry for the quantity above. Added during poaching it partly cooks off; a spoonful stirred into the reduced syrup at the end gives a sharper flavour.
- Stones and servingThe recipe leaves the fruit whole, so the peaches are cooked and served with the pits in; warn anyone at the table. No quantity or yield is given in the original. Serve chilled, with cold pouring cream, which is what "sweet cream" means here — unsoured, unwhipped.
Compote, from the French, has meant fruit cooked whole or in pieces in sugar syrup since the seventeenth century, and it was valued in nineteenth-century households because it was a gentle way to treat delicate fruit: no crust, no oven, and the syrup itself became the sauce. Whole, unblemished, hand-pared peaches were a display item — the point was to bring them to the table intact, glossy under their thickened syrup, rather than mashed into a sauce or hidden in a pie. The cinnamon bark, cloves and wine are common European aromatics for poached fruit.