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Italian Cream with Compote of Figs
Cut a pound of figs into small pieces and one or two lemons likewise and stew them together with sugar and water. Make the compote ice cold and serve it a spoonful in each saucer with the Roman or Italian cream. A compote of fruit is fruit stewed in a thick rich syrup.
The compote is fully specified; the cream is not, and the sugar and water are left to judgment. A few decisions have to be made before you start.
- Which figsA pound of dried figs and a pound of fresh behave very differently. Dried figs will drink the syrup and need a good 25-30 minutes of gentle stewing plus liquid to cover; ripe fresh figs collapse in 8-10 minutes and want less sugar. Dried is the likelier reading here, since dried figs were the form available year-round.
- The unstated syrupNo proportions are given. For a compote in the sense the recipe defines — fruit stewed in a thick rich syrup — start at roughly equal weights of sugar and water, about a cup of each to the pound of figs, and reduce at the end if it is thin. Sugar this heavy is also what let the dish sit in a cold larder for days.
- Cutting the lemons"One or two lemons likewise" most likely means cut small, peel and all. Two whole lemons stewed with a pound of figs would be markedly bitter from the pith; one lemon, seeded, thinly sliced, is the safer reading, and you can add extra juice at the end for sharpness.
- Italian or Roman creamBoth names were generally used in this period for cream-and-sugar desserts flavored and set soft with isinglass or gelatin, sometimes lightened with whipped cream or beaten egg white, though the names were not consistent from book to book. This page assumes you have that recipe to hand; it is not a substitute for a custard sauce.
- Ice cold means coldThe compote should be chilled several hours, not merely cooled. Warm syrup will slump and melt a gelatin-set cream on contact.
- Yield and servingA pound of figs plus its syrup makes a generous quantity — served a spoonful to a saucer it will stretch across a dozen or more portions alongside the cream. Leftover compote keeps several days refrigerated in its syrup.
Compotes of this kind sit at the point where a pastry cook's stewed fruit meets the cold molded creams that dominated late nineteenth-century American dessert tables. The definition tacked onto the end — "fruit stewed in a thick rich syrup" — tells you the term still needed explaining to the book's readers. Figs came dried, in pressed layers or strings, and were a reliable pantry fruit long before fresh ones were shipped any distance; stewing them with lemon and heavy syrup restored the plumpness and cut the flat sweetness. The pairing with a set cream follows a standard service logic of the period: something cold and bland in the mold, something sharp and dark in the saucer beside it. "Italian cream" and "Roman cream" are probably best read as loose trade names rather than dishes with a documented Italian origin, applied to gelatin creams much as "Spanish" and "Bavarian" seem to have been — menu language more than anything else.