Home › The Principles of Cookery › Fruit, Compote of Mixed
Fruit, Compote of Mixed
Boil ten ounces of sugar and half a pint of water ten minutes; take the stalks from a quart of red currants and let them simmer with the same quantity of raspberries from eight to ten minutes in the syrup. Get ripe but sound raspberries, and see that they are free from moisture before they are put into the syrup.
A plain sugar-syrup compote of the kind Victorian cooks served cold with cream or sponge fingers. The proportions are sound; the timings need judgement.
- Measurements in modern termsTen ounces of sugar is about 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups; half a pint (Imperial) is ten fluid ounces, a scant 1 1/4 US cups of water. A quart of currants is roughly 1 1/4 lb; "the same quantity" of raspberries most likely means a quart by volume, a pound or more.
- The syrup is the pointTen minutes' boiling reduces the water appreciably and thickens the syrup enough to coat the fruit. Boil in a wide pan and watch it; if it goes too far it will candy at the edges.
- Cook the currants first, then the raspberriesCurrants have tougher skins and stand the full 8-10 minutes; raspberries break down considerably faster. Give the currants a head start and add the raspberries towards the end if you want whole fruit rather than a coulis.
- Why the fruit must be drySurface water thins the syrup. Spread them on a cloth and leave them; do not rinse them at all if they are clean.
- Simmer, do not stirMove the pan rather than a spoon, or shake it gently. Stirring breaks the berries and clouds the syrup.
- Stalks and stringsCurrants are easiest stripped by running a fork down the strig over a bowl. Any stalks left in will be unpleasantly woody in the finished compote.
- Yield and servingServing -- Cool in the syrup and serve cold; it keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
Cassell's places this among its short, formulaic compote entries, which reflects how the dish was understood in late Victorian England: fruit poached in a boiled sugar syrup, served cold, and firmly distinct from both jam (long-boiled, for keeping) and stewed fruit (cooked with sugar and its own juice). The word comes from the French compote, from Latin composita, "something put together", and the currant-and-raspberry pairing was an obvious one in a country where both ripened in the same weeks of high summer. Red currants bring acid and pectin, raspberries bring perfume; the combination is the same logic behind the raspberry-and-currant tarts that appear throughout nineteenth-century cookery books.