Home › The Principles of Cookery › Cherries, Kentish, Compote Of
Cherries, Kentish, Compote Of
Put a quarter of a pound of loaf sugar into a saucepan with a breakfast-cupful of water, and boil it for ten minutes. Put in half a pound of Kentish cherries, with about an inch of the stalks left on; let them simmer gently for five minutes. Drain them, and put them into a compote dish with the stalks upwards. Boil the syrup five minutes longer; when it is cool, pour it over the cherries. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost of cherries, from 3d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient for a small dish.
A plain sugar-syrup compote that depends entirely on not overcooking the fruit. Half a pound of cherries is a very small dish by modern standards; the proportions double cleanly.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold in hard cones to be broken up and crushed. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent, weight for weight: 4 oz (about 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon).
- A breakfast-cupfulThe breakfast cup of Victorian service held roughly 8 to 10 fl oz. Use a generous cup of water; the exact figure matters little, since the syrup is reduced twice and adjusted by boiling rather than by measure.
- Kentish cherriesIn Victorian use this may mean simply cherries grown in Kent, where both sweet and sour sorts were raised; the old Kentish Red is a red sour cherry, and sour or pie cherries are a safe substitute. Sweet Bing-type cherries will work but will need less time still and the syrup will taste flat without a squeeze of lemon.
- The five minutes is the whole recipeSour cherries collapse quickly. Five minutes at a bare simmer, with no bubbling that could knock the fruit about, is what keeps them whole and holding their stalks. Boiling hard for even a minute or two longer will split the skins and leave you with jam.
- Stalks and stonesThe fruit is left unpitted and the stalks trimmed to an inch so each cherry can be lifted and eaten by hand. That is the point of arranging them stalks upward in the dish. Warn anyone at the table that the stones are still in.
- Reducing the syrupDraining the fruit releases juice into the syrup, which is why it goes back on the heat for a final five minutes. It should coat a spoon lightly when cool; if it is thin, reduce a little further, and if it sets too firm, thin it with a spoon of water.
- Cooling before pouringPouring hot syrup over the drained cherries would continue cooking them. Let it cool to lukewarm at least, then chill the finished dish a few hours so the syrup soaks in.
- YieldThe recipe says only 'sufficient for a small dish'; half a pound of fruit will serve about two. For four to six, double everything and use a wide pan so the cherries sit in one layer.
Compote, from the French for a mixture, meant fruit poached whole or in pieces in sugar syrup and served in its own liquor dash distinct from a preserve, which was cooked hard to keep, and from stewed fruit, which was broken down. Cassell's gives a run of these single-fruit compotes: cheap in season, quick, and needing no oven. The pricing note is the useful detail here dash threepence to sixpence a pound places Kentish cherries firmly in the reach of a middle-class household during the short summer glut, when the Kent orchards sent fruit up to London by rail in quantity. Leaving an inch of stalk turned the dish into something eaten with the fingers from the stem rather than with a spoon.