Muristek
COURTESY PHOTOThis elegant pair of compotes is valued at $800.
I have always been astounded at my Southern clients, who have long family ties to Charleston or New Orleans, because these ladies (Santa Barbara transplants, although they have been in Santa Barbara for generations), have great silver, great textiles (table linens) and usually fine cut or blown glass objects called a pair of compotes.
You must remember that the American South had ties to France in a way no other region did, and my friend V. sends me this fabulous pair of compotes sourced from New Orleans, and, of course, her family is from the Old South. What are these?
This is a very elegant pair of compotes. The dishes were called compotes because of the sauces they contained. As far back as medieval times, Europeans were cooking fruit in a sugar mixture, and that was the original meaning of compote. This pair of glass dishes was meant for that tradition.
This wonderful and elegant pair of glass dishes was always meant to be a pair, and we don’t see them on the East Coast unless we see them in the Southern areas of the U.S., because the food called compote is decidedly invented by the French.
They are designed to hold a type of curative which today we would call a laxative, because it was discovered in the 15th century in France that cooked fruit was “helpful.”
Fruit was cooked in sugar syrup and when cooling, extra sugar and spices were added, along with, perhaps, lemon or orange peel, cinnamon sticks or powder, cloves, ground almonds, grated coconuts and candied fruits or raisins.
As far back as the 15th century, the French began to serve compotes at the end of supper, but in the 17th century, it was necessary to have two matching dishes: one for the fruit cooked in sugar and one for the toppings, which could be whipped cream or sour cream and biscuits. In the 18th century a compote of fruit would be topped with whipped cream, vanilla sugar or cinnamon, and sometimes if you had a fine cook, she would add dried fruit soaked in Kirsch, Rum, or Frontignan.
Now you might think the compote died with the pair of vessels meant to hold the delicious mixtures, but because you could serve fruit with no dairy, Jewish communities adopted the tradition of a compote, and this led to the compote being a cultural heritage of many European Jews. I have seen pressed glass pairs of compotes dating to Pittsburgh in the late 19th century.
Because this tradition continued in the Jewish communities and the Southern areas of the U.S., wonderful glass pairs of compote dishes were passed down in families. V.’s pair are ultra-fine because of the winding, hand blown snake feature on exquisite frosted French style glass.
I find this hard to believe, but March 1 is U.S. National Compote Day, and the National Day Calendar selects a favorite compote recipe, and here is the latest recipe, of course from a Southerner, from “NC Gal”: canned pineapple chunks, ½ cup sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, cup orange and lemon juice, heated on stove with a can of mandarin oranges, and, as cooling, add 4 unpeeled apple slices, and banana slices, and refrigerate. Serve over ice cream! Or yogurt, or on a piece of cheese!
You might ask: Is a compote like a fruit preserve? The answer is no. Fruit preserves, originally called fruit fool, was for preservation, and the compote was not a preserve. It was cooked daily, but only in the South, and in the Jewish East Coast communities.
The Culinary Institute of America has acknowledged two kinds of American Compotes: coulis, which is pureed fruit, and compote classical, which is chunky fruit.
When V.’s family in New Orleans used this wonderful pair of snake wrapped compotes, they took fruit, cream and biscuits in the afternoon. Today, we don’t see many of these footed messengers of fruit and toppings, but compotes are made for cheese platters, yogurt, custard, on toast, sconces, as a side to meat, atop cheesecake … and the compote lives on, sans elegant pairs of dishes.
There’s a form of French and American South compote glass dishes that have covers, and those are for hot compotes of fruit. V.’s are even nicer in that the quality of glass is high French taste, as befitting New Orleans. I would put the value of V.’s exquisite compotes at $800 for the pair.
Dr. Elizabeth Stewart’s “Ask the Gold Digger” column appears Mondays in the News-Press.
Written after her father’s COVID-19 diagnosis, Dr. Stewart’s book “My Darlin’ Quarantine: Intimate Connections Created in Chaos” is a humorous collection of five “what-if” short stories that end in personal triumphs over present-day constrictions. It’s available at Chaucer’s in Santa Barbara.
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