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Raspberry Compote
Put one pound of raspberries and a small quantity of lemon juice into a saucepan pour over sufficient weak syrup to moisten, simmer the whole gently at the side of the fire for three or four minutes, remove the raspberries, drain, place them on a dish, boil up the syrup to the thread degree, pour it over, and serve.
A four-minute poach and a reduced syrup — the whole dish stands or falls on not overcooking the fruit.
- Weak syrupIn a classical kitchen this generally meant a light syrup, on the order of one part sugar to two or three parts water, boiled just long enough to dissolve (something in the region of a 15-20 degree Baumé syrup). Enough to barely cover the berries is the intent; the recipe says "to moisten."
- "At the side of the fire"On a coal range the side was the cool zone. Translate it as the lowest heat your burner will hold, with the syrup barely shivering. A rolling boil will collapse raspberries in under a minute.
- Thread degreeAbout 215-230F (102-110C) on a candy thermometer — the stage where syrup drawn between finger and thumb pulls a short thread. Without a thermometer, watch for the bubbles to turn small, dense and slow.
- Three or four minutes is generousRipe cultivated raspberries need less than that; check at two. They should hold their shape and still have a little resistance. Anything longer and you have sauce with seeds in it.
- DrainingLift the berries out with a slotted spoon or skimmer rather than tipping them into a sieve. Drained fruit set on the serving dish while the syrup reduces will shed a little more liquid; pour that off before the syrup goes over.
- Lemon"A small quantity" is best read as a teaspoon or two — enough to sharpen the fruit, not enough to taste of lemon.
- Yield and servingOne pound of raspberries will serve about four as a dessert course, or more alongside cream, a plain sponge or vanilla ice. It can go to the table warm or chilled; the syrup thickens as it cools.
Compote — from the French for a stewed or preserved fruit — was a fixed item in the nineteenth-century dessert service, distinct from both jam and fresh fruit: the fruit stays whole, the syrup is cooked separately and to a precise degree. Escoffier and his predecessors codified dozens of them, and the instruction here assumes a cook who already knows what "the thread degree" means and needs no further explanation. Sugar boiling by feel and appearance was standard professional knowledge before thermometers became common in restaurant kitchens; the named stages — thread, pearl, blow, feather, crack — ran from roughly 215F up to 310F, and they were said to be learned by hand.