No. 3688

Stewed Cherries

Compote de Cerises

Cut the stalks halfway up from a pound of fine, large, sour cherries. Boil a light syrup in a sugar pan, just having sufficient to cover the fruit, then throw in the cherries; toss them for two minutes, boiling the liquid up once only, then pour the whole into a bowl to leave till cold. Lay both syrup and fruits on a sieve placed on top of the sugar pan and take away some of the fallen syrup, pouring sufficient sugar into the remainder that when boiled again it forms a thick syrup; as this becomes almost cold add the cherries to it, take from the fire and half an hour later dress the stewed fruit.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A French compote rather than a keeping preserve: the fruit is barely cooked, then finished in a syrup reduced separately so the cherries stay whole. Nothing here is difficult, but the two-minute limit is the whole point of the dish.

The hinge: one boil onlyThe cherries go into simmering syrup, are moved gently for two minutes, and the liquid is allowed to come up to a boil exactly once before everything is poured off to cool. Past that the skins split, the fruit collapses and you have jam with stones in it.
Sugar panAn unlined copper preserving pan, wide and shallow, valued for even heat and fast evaporation. Any wide non-reactive pan works; avoid bare aluminium, which reacts with the fruit acid.
Light syrupFor a pound of cherries, roughly 1 cup water to 1/2 cup sugar is enough to cover them in a snug pan. The recipe asks only for enough syrup to cover the fruit.
The second boilingAfter draining, some of the thin syrup is discarded and more sugar added, then the syrup is boiled again until thick. Ranhofer gives no temperature; a modern cook might look for something in the region of 220F, when the syrup begins to sheet from the spoon. Let it cool until barely warm before returning the cherries, or they will cook a second time.
Sour cherriesMorello or Montmorency, not sweet Bings; the acidity is what keeps the compote from tasting flat under all that sugar. Frozen sour cherries work but are already soft, so cut the two minutes to a bare simmer.
The stalksCutting the stems halfway leaves a short stub, presumably as a handle for lifting the fruit at table. Stones are left in, which the diner should be told.
Dress means arrange — pile the cherries in a glass compote dish or coupe and spoon the syrup over them.
Yield and keepingA pound of cherries serves four as a dessert or alongside cream, ice cream or a plain sponge. This is not sealed or processed for storage: refrigerate and use within three or four days.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef of Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working encyclopedia of the French repertoire as it was cooked for American dining rooms, and its preserve chapter is full of compotes like this one. A compote is distinguished from a confiture precisely by its restraint: the fruit is meant to hold its shape and read as fruit, which is why the syrup is reduced away from the cherries rather than with them. Sour cherries are often said to have been the usual cooking cherry of the period in both France and the northeastern United States, with sweet varieties eaten out of hand, and the trick of leaving a trimmed stalk on each fruit is traditionally explained as a survival from a time when a compote arrived at the end of a long menu as something to be picked up in the fingers rather than eaten with a spoon han record.