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RHUBARB, COMPOTE OF (another way) (Cut a pound of rhubarb into)
Cut a pound of rhubarb into pieces half an inch long, and place these in a stewpan with six ounces of powdered sugar and a quarter of a pint of water. Shake the saucepan over a brisk fire until the fruit is tender, lift it out carefully, and pile in the centre of a glass dish. Dissolve in the syrup a tea-spoonful of isinglass or gelatine, colour with two or three drops of cochineal, and when it is cold, pour it round the fruit. Time to simmer the fruit, ten minutes or more. Probable cost of rhubarb, 5d. to 8d. per bundle.
A simple stewed rhubarb set in a lightly jellied syrup. The whole thing hinges on not letting the fruit break up, which is at odds with the instruction to cook it over a brisk fire.
- Heat, not speedThe recipe calls for a brisk fire and "ten minutes or more", but rhubarb collapses into strings the moment it goes past tender, so a bare simmer and testing from about five minutes will keep the pieces whole.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. With 6 oz of sugar to 1 lb of fruit this makes a heavy syrup.
- IsinglassA gelatine made from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish, once the standard clarifying and setting agent. Ordinary powdered gelatine is the direct substitute the recipe itself offers; bloom it in a little cold water before stirring it into the hot syrup.
- How firm it setsOne teaspoon of gelatine in roughly 5 fl oz of syrup is a fairly standard jelly strength, though the setting power of period isinglass varied; if a soft syrup that merely pools round the fruit is wanted rather than a firm collar, use less.
- CochinealA red colouring made from dried scale insects, sold today as carmine or E120. It is not vegetarian, and a small number of people react to it. Forced rhubarb is pink enough that the colouring can simply be left out.
- LeavesOnly the stalks are used. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are not edible; trim and discard them before cutting the stalks.
- ServingEnough for about four as a light dessert. It needs to be properly cold for the syrup to hold its shape, so allow a few hours in the refrigerator, and serve with cream or a plain sponge finger.
Rhubarb reached English kitchens as a medicine long before it reached them as a dessert: the dried root was imported from China and Russia as a purgative for centuries, and the stalks were not widely stewed for the table until sugar became cheap in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the time Cassell's was compiling its dictionary, forced rhubarb was reaching London markets through the late winter, from market gardens nearer the capital as well as from the West Riding of Yorkshire, whose trade to London built up gradually over the 1870s and 1880s. The treatment here is a French one: a compote is fruit poached whole or in pieces in syrup, as distinct from a marmalade or a fool, and the jellied syrup is poured around a heaped centre.