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Compote of Oranges
(France.) Peel, seed, and divide in quarters 4 large, sweet oranges, cook them with 1/2 pint sugar syrup, added to 1 glass of cordial, Maraschino, or Kirsch, for 1/2 hour. Cool, set aside, and serve cold with biscuits.
A two-line French dessert that assumes you already know how a sugar syrup is made and how long fruit will stand up to it. The syrup and the cooking time are the two places it needs help.
- Sugar syrupNo formula is given. A light syrup is commonly made with roughly equal parts sugar and water by volume, boiled until clear; about 1/2 cup sugar to 1/2 cup water will come near the half pint (1 cup) called for, and 1 cup of each will give you a good deal more than you need.
- "1 glass" of cordialGenuinely imprecise. A liqueur glass of the era held roughly 1 to 2 fl oz, and that range suits the dish; treat 2 tablespoons as a starting point and add more off the heat.
- Cooking timeHalf an hour at a simmer will leave peeled orange sections badly broken down. Two to four minutes at a bare simmer is enough to warm them through and let the syrup penetrate; if you want a longer infusion, pour hot syrup over the fruit and let it cool in the bowl instead.
- AlcoholMaraschino here is the dry cherry liqueur of Zadar in Dalmatia, long produced by Italian houses, not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Kirsch is unsweetened cherry brandy. Much of the alcohol and aroma is lost if they are added early, so stir them in once the pan is off the fire.
- Preparing the oranges"Peel, seed, and divide in quarters" at minimum means cutting away all white pith before quartering; you may also take out the membrane between segments, which can turn tough and bitter in syrup, though the recipe does not ask for it. Navels or another seedless sweet orange saves the seeding step.
- BiscuitsFrench biscuits, not American ones — crisp dry cookies such as boudoir biscuits, ladyfingers or langues de chat, meant for dipping in the syrup.
- Yield and servingFour large oranges will serve about four, in shallow glass dishes or coupes. The recipe asks only that it be cooled and set aside before serving cold; chill it thoroughly, and keep it covered in the refrigerator for a day or two.
Compote in French cookery means fruit gently cooked and served in its own syrup, distinct from marmalade or preserve in that it is made to be eaten within a few days rather than sealed away. Oranges reached the French table as a luxury of the southern trade and remained a winter fruit, and many nineteenth-century orange desserts appear alongside the heavy puddings of the cold months — a light, cold, faintly boozy dish to end a long meal. The pairing of citrus with a cherry-based liqueur, maraschino from Dalmatia or kirsch from Alsace and the Black Forest, turns up often enough in the period. Books of this kind, gathering short dishes under national labels for the American home cook, were a product of the turn-of-the-century appetite for continental cooking.