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Compote of Mixed Fruits
Strawberries, Grapes, Raspberries, Nectarines, Green Figs, Melon, Pineapple, etc.
Cut up the larger fruits, and sift a little sugar over all in a dish. Make a syrup of the following: One pound of sugar, one and a half pints of water. Boil together until reduced to a pint, and pour over while hot, and let it stand on ice for twenty-four hours. Turn into a salad bowl, and serve very cold. Make plenty of syrup so that the fruit floats about in it.
A macerated fruit salad in heavy syrup, from an era when the refrigerator was a box of ice. The proportions are sound; the handling of soft fruit needs thought.
- The syrupOne pound of sugar is about 2 1/4 cups; one and a half pints is 3 cups of water (US measure). Boiling it down to a pint gives roughly a 2:1 sugar-to-water syrup, thick enough to draw juice from the fruit without turning to candy. Watch it near the end, as reduction speeds up.
- Hot syrup on cold fruitPouring boiling syrup over strawberries and raspberries part-cooks them and they slump. Let the syrup cool to warm before it meets the berries, or pour it hot over only the firm fruits (pineapple, melon, nectarines) and fold the berries in once everything is cold.
- "Stand on ice" A dish set on ice, or the ice-chest. Refrigerate at 40F or below, covered, for the full twenty-four hours; the maceration is the whole point of the dish.
- Green figsIn period usage this usually meant fresh figs as opposed to dried, though it may also point to green-skinned varieties such as Kadota or Adriatic. Use them ripe and soft, quartered, and add them late so they hold shape.
- GrapesGrapes of the period would generally have had seeds, and would need halving and picking over. Seedless grapes need only halving, and they contribute little juice, so treat them as texture rather than flavour.
- Quantity and yieldNo amounts are given for the fruit. About 2 1/2 to 3 lb of prepared mixed fruit serves six to eight, and the instruction to make plenty means the fruit should be submerged, not merely coated -- so expect to need more syrup than the single pint the given proportions yield.
Compote in the French sense means fruit cooked or steeped in sugar syrup, distinct from the English stewed fruit, and by the late nineteenth century an iced compote of mixed raw fruits was one way to close a formal dinner. The list of fruits, with nectarines, green figs, melon and pineapple all in play at once, describes a well-supplied summer market or a household with a hothouse and good rail connections; the twenty-four hours on ice tells you the same thing, since sustained cold storage at home was still a matter of buying block ice by the week.