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Stewed Rhubarb
Skin three-quarters of a pound fresh, sound, red rhubarb. Cut it into one-inch-long pieces. Place in a saucepan with half pound granulated sugar and the rind of quarter of a sound lemon. Set the pan on a brisk fire and thoroughly mix with a wooden spoon until completely dissolved, which will take about fifteen minutes. Remove from the fire and let cool off. Remove the lemon rind. Transfer to a glass dish and serve.
A compote of the plainest kind: rhubarb, sugar, lemon peel, no water. The whole thing turns on managing the heat so the fruit gives up its own juice before it catches.
- No liquid is added — stir earlyThe pan starts dry, and the sugar needs a few minutes of contact with the cut rhubarb before it draws out enough juice to keep things moving. Start over low heat, stir until you see syrup pooling, and only then raise the flame. "A brisk fire" applied to a dry pan of sugar will scorch it.
- Quantities in modern termsThree-quarters of a pound of rhubarb is roughly 4-5 medium stalks; half a pound of granulated sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons. That is an unusually heavy hand with sugar by current taste; reducing it to two-thirds gives a less sweet result, though the syrup will be thinner.
- "Skin" the stalksOlder, thicker rhubarb has stringy outer fibre that is worth pulling off with a paring knife. Slender early-season stalks do not need it, and peeling them costs you most of the red colour.
- Fifteen minutes is the outside limit"Until completely dissolved" refers to the sugar, not the fruit. Tender forced rhubarb collapses in 5-8 minutes; field rhubarb may take the full quarter hour. Pull it while the pieces still hold their shape if you want a compote rather than a purée.
- Lemon rind, not zestA quarter lemon's worth of peel, pared in wide strips with none of the white pith, is meant to be lifted out whole at the end. Grated zest cannot be removed and gives a much more assertive flavour.
- ColourOnly red-stalked varieties give the pink result implied here; green rhubarb cooks to a dull greenish brown. The original's call for 'red' rhubarb is presumably for appearance.
- LeavesUse stalks only. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are not eaten.
- Yield and servingAbout 2 cups, serving three or four. The instruction to cool it and turn it into a glass dish is deliberate: this was served cold as a dessert or breakfast fruit, often with cream or a plain biscuit, not hot as a sauce.
Rhubarb reached European kitchens as a medicinal root long before anyone ate the stalks; the culinary use spread in Britain from the late eighteenth century onward, once cheap sugar made the intense sourness manageable, and forced rhubarb grown in dark sheds became a recognised winter crop in Yorkshire. It appears in a book called The International Cook Book, among a great many short, unglamorous entries that any household cook already half knew. The method here — sugar, a scrap of lemon peel, no water at all — relies on the fruit's own considerable moisture, and it remains the best way to keep the pieces intact rather than boiling them to a slurry.