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Apricots, Compote of Green
Remove, by rubbing with a dry cloth, the down from a pound of young green apricots. Put into a saucepan three-quarters of a pint of water and half a pound of sugar; let it boil for ten minutes or more, being careful to remove them scum as it rises. Put in the apricots; simmer them very gently. Lift them out one by one with a spoon to prevent them breaking, and place in a glass dish. When the syrup is cool, pour it round them. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
A plain sugar-syrup compote that depends entirely on restraint at the stove: green apricots are firm but they collapse the moment the syrup is allowed to gallop. Everything else here is arithmetic.
- The measurementsThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, about 1¾ US cups. Half a pound of sugar is a generous cup (roughly 225 g), giving a light syrup rather than a preserving one.
- Green apricotsThese are immature fruit picked well before ripeness — firm, tart, still fuzzy, with a soft undeveloped stone. They are sold in Middle Eastern and some Mediterranean groceries in late spring and are not the same thing as an underripe supermarket apricot, which is simply a ripe variety picked early.
- The hinge: barely a simmerThe syrup is boiled on its own for ten minutes or more first, then dropped to the gentlest movement once the fruit goes in. A rolling boil splits the skins and turns the flesh to pulp. Keep the surface trembling, not bubbling.
- How long in the syrupCassell gives no time. Green apricots need roughly 8 to 12 minutes depending on size — they are done when a skewer meets slight resistance, not when they are soft. Undercooking slightly is the safer error, as they continue to soften in the hot syrup.
- SkimmingThe scum is impurity from the sugar, more of an issue with the sugars of the period than with modern refined granulated. You may see almost none; skim what appears and move on.
- The stonesThe fruit is poached whole and unpitted, so tell people at the table. Apricot kernels contain amygdalin and should not be cracked open and eaten, though the intact stone inside a poached fruit poses no problem.
- Cooling and servingPouring warm syrup over the fruit continues to cook it; let the syrup cool to room temperature first, as directed. Chill before serving. Serves six as written, as a light dessert with cream or a plain biscuit.
Compotes — whole or halved fruit poached in sugar syrup and served in their own liquor — were a fixture of the nineteenth-century English dessert course, positioned somewhere between fresh fruit and a made pudding, and Cassell's carries dozens of them arranged alphabetically by fruit. The use of green, unripe apricots reflects both the kitchen garden and thrift: immature apricots, too sour and firm to eat out of hand, take beautifully to sugar, and it is often suggested that fruit thinned from the tree in early summer to let the remainder swell had to go somewhere. The same logic produced green gooseberry fools and green walnut pickles. The costing of one shilling and the note that it serves half a dozen are standard features of Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery.