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Apples and Apricots, Compote Of
Place in a saucepan half a pound of sugar and half a pint of water. Let it boil for ten minutes to thicken, then put into it eight or nine golden pippins pared and cored without being divided. Let them simmer very gently until they are clear and soft, but not broken. Lift them out carefully, and lay them in a deep glass dish; pour round them some good cold custard, and put on the top of each apple a spoonful of apricot jam. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A poached-apple dessert built on three separate elements — syrup, fruit and custard — with the assembly done cold. The one thing that decides whether it works is the gentleness of the simmer.
- The hinge: barely a simmerWhole cored apples collapse the moment the syrup moves briskly. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble, uncovered, and turn the fruit with a spoon rather than stirring; they are done when translucent at the edges and a skewer slides in with slight resistance.
- Syrup quantitiesHalf a pound of sugar is 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; half a pint in this English book is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ cups. Ten minutes of boiling brings it to a light syrup — do not let it colour or it will be too thick to poach in.
- Golden pippinsA small, firm, sharp English dessert apple, now rare. Any firm cooking-eating apple that holds shape will do: Braeburn, Cox, Pink Lady or a russet. Avoid McIntosh and most Galas, which go to mush.
- Coring whole"Without being divided" means an apple corer or a narrow knife worked from the stem end, leaving the fruit intact. A hollow apple floats, so weight it with a plate or a round of parchment cut to the pan.
- "Good cold custard"Almost certainly a stirred egg custard (crème anglaise) made separately and chilled; the book gives no quantities. A workable modern version is about 4 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 cups milk, cooked to 175–180F. Both apples and custard must be properly cold before assembly or the sauce thins and slides.
- Apricot jamVictorian jams were often boiled harder and set stiffer than many modern preserves. If yours is loose, warm it with a squeeze of lemon, reduce briefly and cool, so the spoonful sits on the apple instead of running into the custard.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The "probable cost, 1s. 4d." is a Victorian housekeeping estimate of the kind given throughout the book; it is of no use as a modern price.
A compote in the French sense is fruit cooked whole or in large pieces in sugar syrup, kept intact rather than reduced to a purée or preserve — the word shares its root with English "compost", both from Latin composita, something put together. The finish here is pure Victorian dining-room: the fruit arranged in a deep glass dish so the layers show, flooded with cold custard, each apple capped with jam for colour. The golden pippin was one of the most admired English apples of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, praised for keeping its shape and its acidity in cooking; it had largely dropped out of commercial growing by the twentieth century, which is why the variety is a puzzle to modern readers while the method is not.