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Nutmeg Compote
Make a syrup as above and while it is still hot lay in it cubes or strips of melon, simmering five or six minutes, then placing in serving-dish. Cook the syrup down till thick, add any flavouring desired and pour over the melon. Heap whipped cream on this and serve.
A short, forgiving recipe, but it depends on a syrup given in an earlier entry and on a melon variety no longer sold under that name. Both need filling in before you start.
- "Syrup as above"The book is referring back to a syrup given in an earlier melon entry, which is not reproduced here. A light poaching syrup of roughly equal parts sugar and water, boiled until clear, will stand in; scale it to cover the fruit.
- Nutmeg melonThe name was used in American markets for a small, netted muskmelon rather than for the spice. A ripe cantaloupe or other small netted melon is the nearest thing on a modern counter.
- Choose a firm melonThe hinge of the dish. A dead-ripe, soft melon collapses into strings in the syrup. Pick fruit that is fragrant but still firm at the blossom end, and cut cubes no smaller than an inch.
- Five or six minutes is the limitThe melon should be translucent at the edges and still hold its shape. Longer and the cell walls give way, leaving sweet pulp in a puddle of thin juice.
- Reducing the syrupThe melon goes into the serving dish first, as the recipe directs, then the syrup is boiled down until it thickens enough to coat a spoon. Melon gives up a good deal of water, so expect the reduction to take a little time.
- "Any flavouring desired"Lemon juice, ginger, vanilla or a spoon of maraschino or brandy would all be at home here. Add acid off the heat; a little lemon keeps the sweetness from going flat.
- Serve cold or barely warmThe recipe implies immediate service, but the compote is better chilled two hours so the syrup soaks in. Whip the cream unsweetened, since the syrup carries plenty of sugar.
- YieldOne medium melon gives about four servings.
Melon appears in early twentieth-century fruit books with a certain wariness: it was often said to be too watery and too cold on the stomach to be eaten plain, and cooking it in syrup is traditionally described as one way of bringing it to table. "Nutmeg" was a market name for the small netted muskmelons grown widely in the eastern United States before the Rocky Ford and later hybrid cantaloupes displaced them, and the name is usually traced to the fruit's shape and aromatic scent rather than to any spice, though that explanation is uncertain. Compote itself is the older French method of fruit gently simmered in syrup and served in its own liquid, distinct from preserves in that it was made for the day rather than for the shelf; the whipped cream heaped over the top is the reason this reads as a dessert rather than a side dish.