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Dessert

Stewed Fruit

A dish of fruit simmered in a sweet syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Stewed Fruit

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar for 10 minutes, skimming off the scum.

Cook the fruit

  1. Add the fruit and simmer slowly until it is soft but not broken, stirring frequently.

  2. Carefully lift the fruit out and place it on a dish.

Finish

  1. Let the syrup boil, then pour it over the fruit.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Fresh fruit
Provides the main body, flavour and texture of the dish once softened.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the syrup and adds body to the liquid the fruit simmers in.

The step that matters

Simmering the fruit slowly. Gentle heat softens the fruit while keeping its cell walls intact, so it stays whole. A hard boil would break the fruit apart and cloud the syrup.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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