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Stewed Figs and Raisins
Soak a pound fine California figs in cold water for four hours. Drain and place in an enamelled saucepan with a half pound California seeded raisins, one and a half ounces granulated sugar, the rind of a quarter lemon, a small piece cinnamon stick, gill claret and just enough water to nearly cover fruits. Cover pan and let slowly boil for twenty-five minutes, remove pan to table and let stand for thirty minutes. Take up lemon rind and cinnamon, pour stew in a deep compotier and serve.
A simple compote of dried fruit in red wine, and the only real pitfalls are the archaic measures and the temptation to cook it too hard.
- A gill of claretA gill is a quarter pint: about 4 fl oz (half a cup) by US measure, 5 fl oz if the book is following British measure. Claret is the old English term for dry red Bordeaux; any dry, unoaked red works.
- An ounce and a half of sugarRoughly 3 tablespoons. It is a light hand for a pound of figs and half a pound of raisins, which is the point — the fruit supplies most of the sweetness.
- "Slowly boil"Means a bare simmer with the lid on, barely breaking the surface. A real boil in twenty-five minutes will collapse the figs into jam and drive off the wine before it has flavoured anything.
- The half-hour restThis is the hinge of the recipe. Off the heat, the figs keep absorbing the syrup and the liquid thickens as it cools; skipping it leaves you with thin, winey juice and underswollen fruit.
- Enamelled saucepanSpecified because bare cast iron or unlined copper reacts with wine and acidic fruit, dulling the colour and taking on a metallic edge. Stainless steel or any modern lined pan is fine.
- California figsDried Mission or Calimyrna. Trim the hard stems before soaking. Modern dried figs may well be softer than the stock this recipe assumed, so check them at the four-hour mark — two hours may be enough.
- CompotierA footed glass or china bowl for serving fruit. Any deep serving dish does; serve warm or at room temperature, with cream or plain cake.
- YieldA pound and a half of dried fruit swells considerably — six to eight servings. It keeps a week refrigerated and improves on the second day.
Stewed dried fruit in spiced wine is one of the oldest sweet dishes in the European repertoire, descending from the medieval and Renaissance habit of poaching figs, raisins and prunes with cinnamon and sweetened wine, and it survived into the nineteenth-century household as a winter dessert when fresh fruit was scarce. What dates this particular version is the phrase "California figs" and "California seeded raisins": by the time this book was compiled, the San Joaquin Valley had made the United States a serious dried-fruit producer, and American cookbooks are often said to have begun naming the origin as a mark of quality rather than importing Smyrna figs and Málaga raisins as a matter of course. The seeded raisins are another period marker — "seeded" meaning that the seeds had been removed — at a time when seedless Thompson grapes were spreading fast, hence the careful specification.