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Apple Compote
Pare, core, and quarter the apples, wash them, and put them in a pan with sugar and water enough to cover them. Add cinnamon, and lemon peel which has been previously soaked, scraped and cut in strings. Boil gently till done; lay in a deep dish. Boil the syrup to the proper consistency, and pour over the apples.--Mrs. E.
A plain stewed-apple dish that depends almost entirely on how you cut the fruit and how far you reduce the syrup. The original gives no quantities, so a little judgment is needed.
- ProportionsFor 2 lb of apples (about 6 medium), start with 1 cup sugar and 1 to 1 1/2 cups water — enough to just cover. This is a light syrup, not a preserve; the sugar can be cut to 2/3 cup without the quarters falling apart.
- Choose a firm appleA compote wants fruit that holds its shape: Braeburn, Granny Smith, Honeycrisp, Jonagold. Anything that bakes down to sauce (McIntosh, Cortland) will collapse in the syrup and defeat the purpose.
- "Boil gently"Means a bare simmer with the pan uncovered, 10 to 15 minutes depending on the variety. Test with a skewer: it should meet slight resistance. Rolling boil breaks the quarters up, which is the one failure this dish is prone to.
- The lemon peelSoaking and scraping removes the bitter white pith; the strings are the yellow zest only. A vegetable peeler takes the zest off cleanly in one pass, and the soaking step can be skipped if no pith comes with it.
- CinnamonUse one or two whole sticks, not ground — ground cinnamon clouds the syrup and settles as grit. Fish the sticks and peel out before serving, or leave them in the dish for looks.
- "Proper consistency"After the apples are lifted out, reduce the syrup over higher heat until it coats a spoon and sheets slowly off it, roughly the thickness of maple syrup. It will thicken further as it cools, so stop a little short.
- Yield and serving2 lb of apples serves four to six. Good cold or barely warm, on its own or with cream, and it keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator.
Compote comes from the French compote, fruit cooked whole or in pieces in syrup; the word appears in English cookery writing from the late seventeenth century onward as a lighter alternative to the heavier baked and preserved fruit dishes. Its appeal in a book like Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) is practical: apples kept in a cellar or barrel through the winter, and a compote used up fruit that was sound but past its best for eating raw, while asking nothing but sugar, water, and a lemon. The book, edited by Marion Cabell Tyree, was compiled from contributions credited to some 250 Virginia housekeepers, which may be why so many entries carry only an initial — "Mrs. E." — and why quantities are so often left to the cook.