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Melon Compote
2 pounds melon 4 ounces sugar 1 teaspoon ground ginger Ginger A bay leaf Take off the hard outside of the melon, and remove all the center, cut into pieces about the size of a plum. Make a syrup of the sugar flavored with a little of the melon peel, bay leaf and the ginger, in about half a pint of water; let this simmer for about an hour, and pour it over the pieces of melon.
A cold compote in which the fruit is never cooked: a spiced syrup is simmered down, then poured over raw melon so the pieces soften and take the flavour without collapsing. Two details in the ingredient list need sorting out before you start.
- The hinge: firm melon onlyBecause the melon is only warmed by the syrup, ripe, fragrant melon turns to slush and weeps water into the syrup. Use fruit that is still firm and slightly underripe — an unripe cantaloupe or honeydew, or the pale flesh near the rind — cut into plum-sized chunks.
- The duplicated gingerThe list gives both "1 teaspoon ground ginger" and a bare "Ginger", which may simply be a duplicated line, or may indicate a piece of fresh or preserved root ginger to simmer in the syrup alongside the powder. A thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, sliced, is one reasonable reading; the ground ginger goes in with the sugar.
- Half a pintIn imperial measure that is 10 fl oz; if you read it as a US half-pint it is 8 fl oz. Either works, since the point is to reduce it. Four ounces of sugar is a generous half-cup.
- An hour of simmeringA cup of water at a bare simmer for an hour will nearly vanish in an uncovered pan. Keep the heat very low with the lid ajar, and top up with a splash of water if it drops below about half its volume. You want a thin syrup, not caramel.
- The peel"A little of the melon peel" means the rind pared off at the start. Use a couple of strips, and strain everything — peel, bay, ginger — out of the syrup before pouring.
- Pour hot, then chillThe syrup should go over the melon hot enough to draw juice from the fruit. Cover and refrigerate at least four hours, ideally overnight, so the melon takes up the spice; the syrup will thin as the fruit gives up liquid.
- YieldTwo pounds of melon, trimmed, gives about four modest servings. It keeps two or three days refrigerated, after which the fruit softens.
Meatless cookery books of the First World War years were written less for vegetarians than for households told to conserve meat, and their dessert chapters lean heavily on fruit, which needed no fat or eggs. A compote in this sense is the older French one — fruit steeped in a sugar syrup rather than stewed to a mush — and pouring the hot syrup over raw fruit is often said to be a nineteenth-century trick for keeping shape and colour. The bay leaf will look odd to modern eyes, but bay, ginger and mace were common sweet flavourings in English fruit cookery long before they were confined to the savoury side of the kitchen. Melon treated this way also points toward the pickled and preserved melon rind of the same period, when the melons then grown rewarded spicing.