Home › The Principles of Cookery › CHERRIES, COMPOTE OF (another way)
CHERRIES, COMPOTE OF (another way)
Take off the stems from Kentish or Morella cherries. Make a syrup with five ounces of sugar and half a pint of water for the former, but allow another ounce of sugar for the extra acidity of the Morellas. Stew one pound of the fruit in the syrup for twenty minutes; they may be stoned or not. When the Morellas are very ripe, they may be stewed only ten minutes, and will then be excellent. Time: ten minutes to boil sugar; eight to ten minutes Morellas;--fifteen minutes for Kentish cherries. Probable cost of cherries, 3d. to 6d. per pound. Morella cherries are generally rather more expensive.
A plain sugar-syrup compote of sour cherries, and one of the few Victorian fruit recipes whose proportions still work unaltered. The only real trap is the timing, which the entry contradicts itself on.
- Trust the shorter timeThe body of the recipe says stew twenty minutes; the summary line says fifteen for Kentish and eight to ten for Morellas. Take the shorter figures. Sour cherries collapse into shreds well before twenty minutes, and the fruit should hold its shape in the syrup.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups or 285 ml. With 5 oz (140 g) of sugar that gives a light syrup, roughly one part sugar to two parts water by volume.
- Kentish and MorelloBoth are sour cherries, not the sweet kind. Kentish is an old English name for a bright red, soft-fleshed sour cherry of the light-fleshed (amarelle) type; the nearest thing on sale in America is Montmorency. Morello is darker, firmer and sharper. Any tart cherry works; sweet Bing or Rainier types will need the sugar cut by at least a third and only a few minutes of cooking.
- Frozen fruitFrozen sour cherries are the practical modern source and are almost always already stoned. Add them to the syrup still frozen and start counting from the point the syrup returns to a simmer; they will need less time than fresh.
- StoningThe recipe is indifferent: 'they may be stoned or not.' Stones give a faint almond note to the syrup, but they must be warned about at the table. Stone the fruit over a bowl so the juice goes back into the pan.
- Boil the syrup firstThe ten minutes allowed for the sugar is presumably to dissolve it fully and reduce the water slightly before the fruit goes in. Skipping it is likely to leave a thinner syrup.
- Yield and servingA pound of cherries in this quantity of syrup serves four as a dessert. Serve cold with cream, custard or a plain sponge; the syrup also keeps a few days refrigerated and is good over rice pudding.
A compote, in the French sense the Victorian kitchen borrowed, is whole or halved fruit poached in sugar syrup and served in that syrup, as distinct from a jam boiled to setting point or a fruit stewed to a pulp. Cassell's gives several versions because the technique changes only in the sugar and the minutes, and this entry is essentially a table of both for sour cherries. The two named varieties reflect English orchard practice: Kent was the centre of English cherry growing from the sixteenth century onward, and the Morello, a dark, acid cherry generally traced to continental Europe, was the standard cottage-garden sour cherry, often grown flat against a north wall where sweet varieties would not ripen. The price note is a reminder of what the book was for -- household cooks buying by the pound at threepence to sixpence, with the sharper Morellas costing more, needing to know before they chose which fruit the recipe assumed.