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Compotcs, Syrup For
The quantity of sugar used for the syrup in compotes must depend upon the acidity of the fruit. For rhubarb, green gooseberries, early apples, etc., we should recommend ten ounces of loaf sugar to be boiled gently with half a pint of water for ten minutes. One pound of fruit must then be put in and boiled gently until it is sufficiently cooked. Lift the fruit into a deep glass dish, pour the syrup round it, and serve. For apricots, plums, strawberries, and cherries, six ounces of sugar will be sufficient. Exact directions can scarcely be given, as the degree of ripeness which the fruit has attained, and the state of the weather when it was gathered, must be considered in deciding what quantity of sugar should be used; but we can assure those who have not been accustomed to serve fruit in this way that it is most delicious and wholesome. The flavour of the fruit is preserved, and a compote is always an elegant and agreeable addition to the table. Generally speaking, the larger the amount of sugar used the clearer will be the syrup, and the longer it will keep. It should be broken into lumps, not crushed to powder.
A working formula rather than a fixed recipe: sugar to water for a poaching syrup, scaled to how sour the fruit is. The numbers translate cleanly once the imperial measures are sorted out.
- The measuresAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Ten ounces of sugar is roughly 1½ cups granulated by volume; six ounces is a scant cup. Weigh if you can, since sugar volume varies with packing.
- Loaf sugarSold as a hard cone or block of highly refined cane sugar, chipped into lumps with nippers. Modern granulated or cube sugar is much the same thing chemically. The instruction to break it into lumps rather than powder probably has to do with even dissolving and a clear syrup; either way it matters little now that sugar is uniformly refined.
- The ratio, in shortSour fruit — rhubarb, green gooseberries, early apples — gets about 10 oz sugar to 1¼ cups water per pound of fruit. Ripe stone fruit and berries get 6 oz to the same water. Anything in between is a judgement call, which is precisely what the book is saying.
- Boil the syrup firstThe ten minutes of boiling before the fruit goes in dissolves the sugar fully and concentrates the syrup a little, which should help the fruit hold its shape rather than collapse into thin liquid.
- "Boiled gently" means barely movingA true boil breaks the fruit. Hold the syrup at a bare simmer, 180–200F, and count in minutes: strawberries and raspberries 1–2, cherries and ripe plums 5–8, rhubarb 3–5, apple and gooseberry 8–12 depending on size. Take fruit out the moment a skewer slides in.
- Reducing afterwardsIf the syrup is thin once the fruit is lifted out, boil it down for a few minutes before pouring it over the fruit.
- KeepingThe remark that more sugar makes the compote keep longer belongs to an unrefrigerated larder and is not a preserving instruction. Treat a compote as a fresh dish: covered in the refrigerator, three to four days.
- YieldOne pound of fruit with its syrup serves four as a dessert, or six alongside cream, custard or a plain sponge.
Compote is simply the French for a fruit stewed whole or in pieces in sugar syrup, distinct from a confiture or preserve in that it is made to be eaten within a day or two rather than sealed away. It is less a single recipe than a method applied across a whole season's fruit, from forced rhubarb in spring through gooseberries and cherries to late plums. The insistence that no exact directions can be given is characteristic of good late-Victorian instruction: fruit came from a garden or a market stall, not a graded supply chain, and its sweetness varied with ripeness and weather in a way the cook was expected to taste for. The praise of compote as "wholesome" is often said to reflect a period preference for fruit cooked and sugared over fruit eaten raw, which was sometimes suspected of causing summer illness.