Skip to main content
Dessert

To Prepare Cranberries for Tarts

Cranberries simmered in sugar to make a compote for use in tarts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

To Prepare Cranberries for Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Simmer the cranberries in moist sugar for 20 minutes without breaking them.

  2. Let the cranberries cool before using.

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart fruit body and structure that holds the compote together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the cranberries.

The step that matters

Simmer without breaking the cranberries. Cranberry skins hold their shape as the pectin softens gently; stirring hard or simmering too long breaks the berries down into mush, leaving a grainy, cloudy texture instead of a glossy compote.

“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.

You might also like