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Compote of Greengages
Boil six ounces of sugar and one pint of water together for one-quarter of an hour. Skim well, put in one and one-half pounds of greengages, and simmer very gently for fifteen or twenty minutes, taking care the greengages do not break. When done let them cool a little, put them in a glass dish and pour the syrup over them.
A plain sugar-syrup compote that depends almost entirely on heat control: the fruit must poach, never boil, or the skins split and the dish turns to jam. Everything else is straightforward.
- The hinge — a bare simmerOnce the greengages go in, the surface should barely tremble, with the pan uncovered and the fruit in a single layer. A rolling boil will burst the skins within a minute or two, which is exactly what the original warns against.
- Greengages and what to use insteadGreengages are a small green-gold European plum, sweet and slightly honeyed, with a short late-summer season. Any firm, slightly underripe small plum works; fully ripe fruit will collapse before the syrup has done anything.
- The syrupSix ounces of sugar by weight is a scant cup (about 170 g); the pint is presumably the US pint, 2 cups. A quarter-hour's boiling leaves a light syrup, though how much water goes depends on the width of the pan and how hard it is boiling.
- SkimmingThe scum is impurities thrown up by the sugar. Modern granulated sugar throws off almost none, so a single pass with a spoon is enough.
- Whole or halvedLeft whole, the fruit poaches evenly but the stones stay in; prick each one once with a needle to stop the skin bursting. Halved and stoned fruit needs closer to 8–10 minutes rather than the full 20.
- Cooling and syrup consistencyLift the fruit out with a slotted spoon before it cools in the pan, and if the syrup seems thin, reduce it again on its own and pour it over warm. It will thicken further as it chills.
- Yield and servingA pound and a half of plums serves four to six. Chill several hours; cream, a spoonful of thick yogurt, or plain sponge fingers are the usual accompaniments.
The greengage is a cultivar of Prunus domestica long grown in France as the Reine Claude, named for the queen consort of François I; the English name is generally traced to the Gage family, who are said to have brought the tree to England in the eighteenth century. A compote — fruit poached whole in sugar syrup and served in its own liquor — sat firmly in the cold-dessert chapter of Anglo-American household books, valued because it required no oven, no eggs and no custard skill, and because it made a brief, perishable summer fruit presentable at table for a day or two. Good Housekeeping's version is typical of the genre in its economy: sugar, water, fruit, and an instruction about temperature that does more work than the ingredient list.