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Rhubarb, Compote Of
Champagne or forced rhubarb is much the best for this dish, so far as appearance is concerned. Wipe or wash, but do not peel the rhubarb, and cut it into three-inch lengths. For a pound of fruit boil a quarter of a pint of water with six ounces of loaf sugar for ten minutes, put in the rhubarb, and let it simmer very gently until it is tender without being in the least broken. Lift the pieces out carefully as they become done enough, and lay these in a glass dish. Boil the syrup for a minute or two, and pour it out to cool. Colour with two or three drops of cochineal, and pour the syrup over the fruit. This dish is an excellent accompaniment to rice moulds or blancmange, and, owing to its bright colour, adds greatly to the appearance of the table. When more convenient, the rhubarb may be baked instead of boiled, but equal care should be taken that the rhubarb does not fall to pieces. Time to simmer, ten minutes or more. Probable cost of rhubarb, 5d. to 8d. per bundle. Sufficient, one bundle for three moderate-sized dishes.
A poaching syrup and a great deal of restraint: the whole point is whole pieces of rhubarb that hold their shape. A few of the terms and the colouring need translating.
- The hinge: barely a simmerRhubarb collapses the moment the water moves properly. Keep the syrup at the faintest tremble, and lift out each piece with a slotted spoon as soon as a skewer meets no resistance — the book allows ten minutes or more, and pieces from the same bundle will not finish together.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 2/3 US cup. With 6 oz sugar to a quarter-pint of water this is a dense syrup, and the fruit will release plenty of its own juice as it cooks.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up with nippers. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- Champagne or forced rhubarbForced rhubarb is grown in the dark in winter, giving slim pink stalks that need no peeling and cook fast. Outdoor summer rhubarb is greener, thicker and stringier; it still works but wants a slightly longer poach and looks duller in the glass.
- CochinealA red colouring made from dried scale insects, sold as a liquid, as the recipe's "two or three drops" implies. It is still permitted as carmine, though not vegetarian; a spoonful of raspberry or blackcurrant juice, or nothing at all, does the same job for appearance.
- Baking insteadFor the oven version, lay the pieces in a single layer in a dish, pour over the hot syrup and cover. The book gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 325F, is a reasonable modern reading, and the recipe's own warning applies — check early so the rhubarb does not fall to pieces. A low steady heat is more forgiving than the pan.
- LeavesOnly the stalks are used. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are always trimmed off and discarded.
- YieldThe book reckons one bundle enough for three moderate-sized dishes, and treats the compote as something spooned alongside a rice mould or blancmange rather than eaten alone. Serve cold, with the syrup poured over at the last moment.
Rhubarb reached English kitchens as a medicine long before it became a pudding — the dried root was imported for its purgative properties, and only in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries did the stalks become a familiar spring fruit. The "forced" or "champagne" rhubarb praised here is a Victorian commercial achievement: crowns lifted from the field, brought into heated dark sheds, and cropped through the winter months, a trade that centred on the West Riding of Yorkshire and depended on the railways to get pale pink bundles to city markets. The recipe quotes a price per bundle rather than per pound, and it fusses over colour: a compote in a glass dish was table decoration as much as dessert.