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Oranges, Compote Of
Pare the rind very thinly off three or four large sound oranges. Cut the fruit across into halves, removing the white skin and pips, and pile the oranges in a glass dish. Boil the rind with half a pint of water and a quarter of a pound of sugar until the syrup is clear; mix a table-spoonful of brandy with it, and strain it over the fruit. When cold it is ready to serve. A table-spoonful of arrowroot may be mixed with the syrup to thicken it, and two or three drops of cochineal may be put in by way of colouring. Time, five or ten minutes to boil the syrup. Probable cost, exclusive of the brandy, 4d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A simple dressed-fruit dessert that depends almost entirely on how the rind is handled. Everything else is a matter of translating imperial measures.
- Pare only the coloured zestThe hinge of the dish is taking the rind "very thinly" — coloured layer only, no white pith. Pith boiled in sugar syrup turns it bitter, and there is nothing else in the recipe to mask it.
- The measuresHalf a pint imperial is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. A quarter of a pound of sugar is roughly ½ cup plus 2 tablespoons of granulated, or 115 g. The result is a light syrup rather than a candying one.
- "Cut the fruit across into halves"The text says halves, with white skin and pips removed. Some cooks prefer to cut the fruit crosswise into rounds instead, which is easier to eat from a glass dish, but that is a preference rather than what the recipe specifies.
- Boiling the syrupFive to ten minutes is enough to draw the oils out of the peel and clarify the sugar. Longer and you are heading for candied peel and a syrup that sets sticky as it cools.
- If you use arrowrootSlake the tablespoon in a little cold water first, then stir it into the hot syrup off the heat. Arrowroot thickens at just below boiling and thins again if held at a hard boil, which is why old cookery books treat it as a finishing agent rather than a cooking one.
- CochinealGenuine cochineal is carmine, extracted from scale insects, and is still sold as a food colouring — though not suitable for vegetarian or vegan eating. It is purely cosmetic here, and the dish is no worse without it.
- The brandyMixed in after the syrup has boiled clear, so it keeps its aroma. Omitting it costs nothing but perfume; the cost is quoted "exclusive of the brandy", which need not mean more than that spirit prices varied.
- ServingSufficient for three or four, as stated. The recipe strains the syrup over the fruit and leaves it until cold, so chill it in the dish and serve it cold rather than dressing the fruit at the table.
Compotes — fruit served in a light sugar syrup rather than preserved in a heavy one — belonged to the cold-sweet end of the Victorian dinner, where they sat alongside jellies and creams as something light after a long series of hot courses. The name comes through French from the Latin composita, "put together", and by the nineteenth century it meant specifically fruit gently cooked or steeped in syrup and eaten soon after, as distinct from jam or marmalade. That Cassell's can quote a cost of fourpence says a good deal about the period: Mediterranean oranges arrived in Britain in bulk by steamer through the later 1800s, and what had been a luxury became a cheap winter fruit sold from barrows. The touch of cochineal reflects a taste, now largely gone, for food coloured deeper than nature managed — a Victorian dessert was expected to look ornamental on the glass dish.