Make a syrup of sugar and water; add a little lemon-juice. Peel and remove seeds of oranges; cut into quarters and lay them in the boiling syrup; let cook ten minutes. Remove the oranges to a glass dish; pour over the syrup and garnish with candied cherries.
September 5 — No. 5
French
A one-line compote of the kind that filled the dessert column of turn-of-the-century menu books. The recipe gives no quantities at all, so the proportions are yours to set.
- Syrup proportionsA medium syrup of 1 cup sugar to 1 cup water, boiled until clear, suits four to six oranges. Lemon juice here is not decoration: about a tablespoon keeps the syrup from crystallising as it reduces and cuts the flatness of straight sugar.
- "Peel and remove seeds"Take off the peel and as much white pith and membrane as you can before quartering, or the pith turns bitter and leathery in hot syrup. A paring knife around the outside, then segments cut free of the membrane, gives the cleanest result.
- Ten minutes is a long timeQuartered oranges will readily collapse into shreds after ten minutes at a boil. Slip them into the syrup off the boil and hold them at a bare simmer for two or three minutes, just until heated through and glossy.
- Rescue for a thin syrupIf the fruit throws off juice and the syrup slackens, lift the oranges out with a slotted spoon, boil the syrup down until it coats a spoon, then pour it over. Boiling the fruit to thicken the syrup only ruins the fruit.
- Candied cherriesThe garnish means glace cherries, the hard sugar-preserved kind still sold for fruitcake, not maraschinos in syrup. Any candied peel or a few pistachios does the same job if you would rather.
- ServingChill several hours in the glass dish so the syrup penetrates the segments; it is better cold than warm. On the four to six oranges suggested above it will serve four to six, and it is a natural partner to sponge cake, rice pudding or plain cream.
Compote comes to English from French, ultimately from Latin compositum, which also gives us compost: cut or whole fruit poached in sugar syrup and served in its own liquid, as distinct from a preserve meant for the store cupboard. Books like this one set out a dish a day and label each by nationality, though the labels are applied across the whole menu rather than to desserts alone -- the neighbouring days here are a Spanish relish and a Spanish baked chicken. Oranges were a winter and early-spring luxury for much of the nineteenth century; by the later part of the century Florida and California shipments had brought prices down considerably.