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Red Currants and Raspberries, Compote Of
Boil together four ounces of sugar and a quarter of a pint of water for ten minutes. Wash and pick one pound of red currants, and remove the stalks from a quarter of a pound of raspberries. Put the fruit into the syrup, and let it simmer very gently for about fifteen minutes or until cooked. Let it cool a little, then turn it into a silver or glass dish, and set it aside until quite cold. Probable cost, 1s.
A plain fruit compote that needs only two adjustments: metric-friendly measures and a shorter, staggered cooking time so the raspberries survive.
- The measuresFour ounces of sugar is a generous half cup (115 g); a quarter of a pint, British measure, is 5 fl oz or about 150 ml. One pound of currants is roughly 450 g, and a quarter pound of raspberries about 115 g.
- Add the raspberries lastFifteen minutes of simmering will reduce raspberries to seeds and pulp. Give the currants ten to twelve minutes in the syrup, then slip the raspberries in for the final two or three so they hold their shape.
- What "until cooked" meansThe currants are done when the skins have just split and released their juice but the berries still sit as separate globes. Past that point the compote becomes jam.
- Boiling the syrupTen minutes at a full boil in a small pan will drive off a fair amount of that scant 150 ml of water and thicken the syrup noticeably. Use a lid off, watch it, and stop while there is still visibly loose syrup in the pan.
- The dishGlass is the safer choice of the two suggestions. Prolonged contact with acidic fruit is often said to dull silver, and the compote is meant to sit in its serving dish until quite cold.
- It will set on its ownIt will not need thickening -- Red currants are among the more pectin-rich fruits, so the syrup may thicken a little as it cools; with only four ounces of sugar to a pound and a quarter of fruit it will not set firm, and no further thickening is wanted.
- Yield and servingAbout a pint of finished compote, enough for four. Serve cold with cream, plain sponge or a custard; covered in the refrigerator it will keep a few days.
- The cost note"Probable cost, 1s." is one shilling, the book's standard guide for a household comparing dishes. It is of no use as a price today but tells you this was a modest, everyday sweet.
A compote, from the French compote and ultimately the same root as "compost" — something put together — is fruit cooked whole or in pieces in sugar syrup, as distinct from a purée, a preserve or a pie filling. The technique is the point: make a syrup first, then poach the fruit in it, so the fruit keeps its shape instead of collapsing into juice as it does when sugar is simply thrown over raw berries. The pairing of red currants with a smaller quantity of raspberries is a standard nineteenth-century English kitchen-garden combination, the two fruits ripening together in July and the sharp, pectin-heavy currant carrying the perfume of the raspberry. The same partnership underlies summer pudding and the old "raspberry and currant tart".