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Compotes, Etc., of Fruit
Abricots au riz are stewed apricots with rice.
Served round a shape of rice cream, with apricot syrup, they are called à la Condé.
Pears, peaches, apples, plums, etc., are dressed in the same way. à l'Américaine-halves of stewed apricots on croûtes of fried bread, glazed with sugar; served with custard.
Compote d'abricots-apricots boiled in syrup. It is also made of green apricots.
Compote d'abricots à la Breteuil-half apricots sprinkled with sugar and broiled; served with apricot and raspberry syrup. À la crème, it is served with cream or custard.
Pain d'abricots is a mould of apricot purée; it is served with cream in the centre.
Meringue d'abricots-apricot marmalade with custard over it, and meringue mixture on the top. Croûtes aux abricots are fried slices of bread spread with preserved apricots, and served with a syrup of apricots.
Pêches en surprise are stewed peaches served in little cases, covered with cream.
Chartreuse de pêches is a mould ornamentally lined ENTREMETS. with pieces of peaches, and filled with peach marmalade.
Compote de pêches-peaches boiled in syrup. They are also dressed in the same way as apricots.
Compotes can be made of any fruit, but soft ripe fruit requires no cooking, if boiling syrup is poured over it.
Prunes au riz are stewed plums or prunes with rice.
Gâteau, or Pain, de Mirabelles is a mould of Mirabelle plum marmalade. As Meringue de prunes, plums are dressed in the same way as apricots.
Pain de prunes à la crème is a mould of stewed prunes, currant jelly, etc.; served with whipped cream in the centre.
Pain de prunes de damas is a mould of damson cheese or marmalade.
Croûtes aux reine-Claudes, brugnons, etc., are little patties of fried bread filled with compote of greengages, nectarines, or other fruit, and the syrup poured round.
A page of fruit cookery in which one fruit is worked several ways: poached in syrup, moulded, piled on fried bread, buried under meringue. The techniques are all still usable; the assumptions behind them are not.
- The fruit was sharper than yoursThe page says apricots are “also made of green apricots” — unripe fruit, used deliberately. Supermarket apricots, peaches and plums have been bred sweeter and softer for a century. The same weight of sugar syrup over modern fruit gives something cloying that collapses, so cut the sugar and shorten the poaching, and take the page at its word where it notes that soft ripe fruit needs no cooking at all if boiling syrup is poured over it.
- Pain and Gâteau mean neither bread nor cakePain d’abricots is not an apricot loaf. It is a purée set firm in a mould and turned out, and Gâteau de Mirabelles is the same idea with plums. Both words are used here for a shape, which is a reliable trap for a modern reader working through an old menu.
- Damson cheese is not dairyPain de prunes de damas is described as a mould of damson cheese. A fruit cheese is fruit and sugar cooked down until it is stiff enough to slice and will keep. It has nothing to do with milk, and it is the one item on this page you can still buy in a British shop.
- Fried bread as a sweet baseCroûtes aux abricots, à l’Américaine, croûtes aux reine-Claudes: slices or little cases of bread fried in butter, spread with fruit, syrup poured round. This has vanished from sweet cookery almost without trace, which is a pity, because it is quick and it holds up under a wet compote better than pastry does.
- Lining a mould ornamentallyThe Chartreuse de pêches is lined with cut pieces of peach, then filled. The pattern is set against the inside of the mould and only appears when it is turned out, so the cook works blind and in reverse. That is the real skill the page assumes, and the batterie of tinned moulds it required is the piece of equipment the modern kitchen no longer owns.
- Compote is a method, not a jamHere it means whole or halved fruit boiled in sugar syrup and served in that syrup. It is not reduced, not set, and not preserved; it is a dish for the day it is made. Modern recipes using the word often mean something cooked down to a pulp, which is a different thing.
The organising fact behind this page is a glut. One fruit arrives in quantity for a few weeks and the kitchen has to put it on the table repeatedly without appearing to repeat itself, so apricots are poached, moulded, broiled, set under meringue, and spread on fried bread, and when the apricots are finished the same five treatments transfer to peaches, plums, greengages and nectarines. The page is explicit about this: peaches “are also dressed in the same way as apricots.” What looks like elaboration is a system for getting variety out of a narrow season, and it tells you the household had a garden or a regular supply rather than a shop that sold everything all year.