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Compote of Figs
4 tablespoons lemon juice 1 cup cream + cup powdered sugar Soak figs in water, then press into shape. Mix sugar and water, boil until syrupy, add lemon juice. Arrange figs on serving dish; cover with syrup; garnish with sweetened cream, beaten until stiff, pressed through pastry bag and tube.
The ingredient list as printed is incomplete — the figs and the sugar and water for the syrup are missing quantities, and the "+ cup powdered sugar" is a typographical casualty. Work from the method and treat the amounts below as a reconstruction.
- What the printed amounts meanThe 4 tablespoons lemon juice and 1 cup cream belong to the finished dish; the powdered sugar is for sweetening the whipped cream, likely 2 tablespoons or so. The sugar and water boiled "until syrupy" are unquantified in the original: a workable ratio is 1 cup sugar to 1 cup water for a light syrup, or 2 to 1 for a heavier one that will coat the figs.
- The figsThese are dried figs, not fresh; fresh figs would not be soaked or pressed. The original gives no quantity; about 1 lb dried figs is a reasonable working amount for six servings. A firmer dried fig such as Calimyrna or Smyrna may hold its shape better under pressing than a softer Mission.
- Soaking is the hingeDried figs need several hours in cold water, or 20 to 30 minutes in hot, until plump and yielding all the way through. Underdone figs stay leathery at the stem end and no amount of syrup will fix them. Trim the hard stem tips before soaking.
- "Press into shape"The phrase is unexplained in the original; the likely sense is that each soaked fig is gently flattened into a neat, even shape so they sit well on the dish. Drain them well first, or the syrup will thin out on the platter.
- Cooking down the syrupThe book says only "boil until syrupy." Boiling to roughly 220-225F gives a light syrup that will coat the figs; take it off the heat before adding the lemon juice, since acid added to boiling syrup can spit and prolonged boiling with the juice in dulls its flavour.
- Poaching the figsAn alternative to pouring hot syrup over cold fruit is to simmer the plumped figs in the syrup for 10 to 15 minutes, which gives a better-glazed fig and a syrup that tastes of it. Cool to room temperature before dressing the dish.
- The creamHeavy or whipping cream, whipped stiff with the powdered sugar. The book specifies only a pastry bag and tube; a star tube is the usual choice for piping. Pipe shortly before serving, since sweetened cream sitting on wet syrup will weep.
- Yield and servingThe original states no yield; roughly six portions from the pound of figs suggested above. Serve cool but not chilled hard, as cold flattens the fig flavour and stiffens the syrup.
Compotes — fruit stewed whole or in pieces in sugar syrup, served in its own liquid — were, by most accounts, among the everyday desserts of the late nineteenth-century American household, cheap, keepable, and possible in any month if you had dried fruit on the shelf. Dried figs came largely from Smyrna in Asia Minor through most of the 1800s; California's Fresno-area orchards, planted with Smyrna cuttings, were only beginning to supply the domestic market in earnest around the time Lowney's Cook Book appeared in 1907. The book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate maker, and like other manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks of the period it surrounded its chocolate formulas with a full general repertoire. The piped rosettes of sweetened cream here are the mark of that era's ambition: a dish of soaked dried fruit dressed to look like something from a hotel pastry kitchen.