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Cherry and Strawberry Compote
Take half a pint of rich cream and mix with it a small glassful of Madeira wine or of good brandy. Pick over some fine cherries and strawberries, stoning the cherries, and taking out the little center piece of each strawberry that is attached to the stalk. Lay your fruit in a shallow dish and cover it with the liquor and serve with the long sponge biscuits known as "langues de chat" (Savoy fingers).
An uncooked compote in the older sense of the word: fruit dressed at table rather than stewed in syrup. Almost everything depends on the quality of the fruit and on assembling it late.
- Half a pint of creamThis is a British book, so the imperial pint of 20 fl oz applies: half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. "Rich cream" means double or heavy cream, poured as it is and not whipped.
- A small glassfulGenuinely imprecise. Period wine glasses of this kind held roughly 2 to 4 tablespoons, and at the upper end the brandy will dominate 10 fl oz of cream. Start with two tablespoons and taste.
- Madeira or brandyMadeira gives a nutty, oxidised sweetness; brandy gives heat and little sugar. Either will thicken cream slightly on standing, and a sharp spirit poured fast can curdle it, so stir the liquor into the cream gradually.
- Taking out the little center pieceThis is hulling: remove the white core along with the stem, not just the leaves, or you get a woody centre in each berry. A paring knife tip or a straw pushed through from the point works.
- Assemble lateStrawberries start to weep soon after they are doused in alcohol or sugared, and the cream takes on colour and thins. Stone and hull in advance, chill everything, and pour the cream over at the last moment.
- Langues de chat and Savoy fingers are not the sameThe recipe treats them as interchangeable, but langues de chat are thin, flat, crisp butter wafers, while Savoy fingers are the piped sponge now sold as ladyfingers or savoiardi. Either will do; the crisp wafer holds up better against cream.
- No sugar is specifiedPossibly deliberate, if the fruit was fully ripe and the Madeira sweet, though the recipe names no season and offers brandy as an alternative. With less sweet berries a spoonful of caster sugar dissolved in the wine before it meets the cream is defensible.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number; half a pint of cream with fruit would serve about four in shallow bowls.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck and published in 1915, its recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had come to Britain after the German invasion of 1914; the book carries the slightly displaced quality of dishes written down from memory in someone else's kitchen. The word compote had by then loosened from its older meaning of fruit cooked in syrup to cover any dish of dressed fruit, and a dry, crisp biscuit rather than pastry was a common French and Belgian accompaniment to cream and fruit at the end of a meal.