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Cherries, Compote Of
Choose large, ripe, light-coloured cherries, wipe them, and leave on them about an inch of stalk, making all uniform. Put half a pound of sugar into a saucepan with a breakfast-cupful of water, and let it boil for ten minutes, then put into it a pound and a half of the cherries, and simmer them for three minutes. Dish them with the stalks uppermost. A table-spoonful of brandy may be added to the syrup. Probable cost of cherries, 3d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient for a large dish.
A simple sugar-syrup poach, and its success rests almost entirely on how briefly the cherries stay in the pan.
- Three minutes means three minutesThe cherries are simmered only long enough to heat through and take up a little syrup. Longer and the skins split, the flesh collapses and the fruit slides off its stalk, which ruins the whole point of the presentation.
- Breakfast-cupfulA breakfast cup in this period is roughly 8-10 fl oz, so a generous cup of water. With 8 oz sugar that gives a light syrup; ten minutes of boiling will reduce it a little and thicken it slightly.
- Quantities in metricHalf a pound of sugar is about 225 g, a pound and a half of cherries about 675 g. The book says only that this is sufficient for a large dish; perhaps four to six servings.
- Light-coloured cherriesThe book means the pale yellow-pink sorts — Napoleon and their kin — chosen because the clear syrup shows their colour. Dark cherries work perfectly well but will bleed and cloud the syrup.
- Stalks on, stones inThe fruit is served whole and unstoned, so warn anyone at the table. Trimming the stalks to a uniform inch is purely for the look of the dish when they are stood upright.
- The brandyAdd the tablespoon of brandy to the syrup off the heat, after the cherries are lifted out, so the alcohol is not driven off. A kirsch or cherry brandy is equally at home here.
- ServingCool the syrup before pouring it over, or the fruit continues to cook in it. Good at room temperature or chilled, with cream, a plain sponge or a spoonful of thick yoghurt.
A compote is one of the oldest and plainest ways of handling fruit in French cookery — the word simply means a mixture, fruit cooked whole or in pieces in sugar syrup, as distinct from a jam, where the fruit is broken down, or a preserve made to keep. Cassell's carries the entry as an alphabetical dictionary heading, 'Cherries, Compote Of', and the technique is a template: master the syrup and the brief simmer and the same method serves for greengages, apricots or plums. The instruction to leave an inch of stalk and dish the cherries stalk-uppermost belongs to the late Victorian dessert table, where fruit was arranged for effect as much as for eating, and a guest could lift each cherry by its stem. The costing of 3d. to 6d. a pound is a reminder of how sharply English cherry prices moved through a short summer season, and how routinely a household cookbook of the period expected its reader to be watching them.