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Orange Compote, with Cocoa-Nut
The oranges should be sliced after peeling, and laid in a glass dish, each layer being sprinkled with grated cocoa-nut, either fresh or desiccated. A thin syrup of sugar and water is to be poured while hot over the fruit. Serve quite cold, with more cocoa-nut sprinkled over last thing. Sliced bananas are sometimes added.
A late-Victorian fruit compote that needs no cooking beyond a sugar syrup. The only real decisions are how you cut the oranges and how sweet the syrup should be.
- Cocoa-nutThis is coconut, grated from a fresh nut or bought dried. Modern desiccated coconut is finer and drier than the Victorian article; unsweetened is what the recipe assumes, since the syrup supplies the sugar.
- Peel to the fleshTake off the white pith with the skin, then slice the oranges crosswise into rounds about 1/4 inch thick and flick out any pips. Pith left on turns bitter as the fruit sits in syrup.
- Thin syrupAbout 1 cup sugar to 2 cups water, simmered three or four minutes until clear, gives a workable thin syrup; period usage of the term varied and the recipe specifies no proportions. A denser syrup will draw more juice out of the oranges.
- Hot syrup, cold dishThe syrup goes on hot, which will soften the coconut and help the fruit release its juice. Cool the whole thing then chill well before serving, since the instruction to serve 'quite cold' is the point of the dish.
- Glass dishThe recipe calls for glass, presumably so the layers of fruit and coconut show. Any non-reactive bowl works, but avoid bare aluminium with this much citrus juice.
- BananasAdd sliced banana only in the last half hour, not at the layering stage. It browns and goes to mush in acidic syrup over several hours.
- YieldSix oranges, roughly 3/4 cup of coconut and a single batch of syrup serves four to six as a light dessert.
Compote in nineteenth-century English usage meant fruit served in syrup rather than the thick cooked pur",