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Raspberries, Compote Of
Pick a pint of freshly-gathered and perfectly sound raspberries, or if preferred take half a pint of raspberries and half a pint of red currants. Boil five ounces of loaf sugar in a quarter of a pint of water for ten minutes, put in the picked fruit, and let it simmer gently for six minutes. Lift the raspberries out carefully, and put them into a glass dish. Let the syrup boil a minute longer, and when it is cold pour it over the fruit. Serve as an accompaniment to simple milk puddings of various kinds. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 5d. to 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A short syrup poaching that depends entirely on restraint: raspberries collapse in seconds, and the six minutes given here is the one figure worth ignoring.
- The hinge: cut the simmering timeRaspberries hold their shape for roughly a minute in hot syrup, two at the outside. Six minutes of simmering leaves you with sauce rather than whole fruit. Slide them in, let the syrup barely tremble, then lift them out with a slotted spoon.
- Imperial pintsA British pint is 20 fl oz, so a pint of raspberries is about 2 1/2 cups, or 10-12 oz by weight. The quarter pint of water is 5 fl oz, a scant 2/3 cup.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone, prized for purity. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct equivalent; 5 oz is about 3/4 cup.
- Red currantsThe optional half-and-half version is the better one if you can get currants, since their pectin and acidity give the syrup body and stop it tasting flat. Currants are firmer than raspberries and can take the full simmer; add the raspberries at the end.
- Reducing the syrupThe extra minute of boiling after the fruit comes out is not filler. The fruit will have thrown juice into the pan, and the syrup needs to be brought back to a coating consistency or it will pool thinly under the berries.
- Serve cold, not chilled to deathThe instruction to pour the syrup over only when cold prevents further cooking. An hour in the refrigerator is enough; very cold fruit loses most of its perfume.
- Cost and yield"5d. to 8d." is five to eight old pence, a pre-decimal price that fixes the book firmly in its period. The stated four or five servings is right if this is a spoonful alongside a pudding rather than a dessert in its own right.
A compote in the French sense is fruit cooked whole in sugar syrup and served in its own liquid, distinct from a preserve, which is cooked to keep, and from stewed fruit, which is cooked to a pulp. It demonstrates the technique cleanly: a syrup made first, the fruit added only to be heated through. The pairing with "simple milk puddings" reflects a real Victorian household economy, in which rice, sago and semolina puddings appeared on the table constantly and were made palatable by whatever fruit the season offered. Raspberries and red currants ripen together in the British summer, which is why they turn up together in so many recipes of the period; the currants supply higher acidity and setting power than raspberries, which are moderate in both.