HOW FOOD WORKS: Why Everyone Should Be Making Compote
No setting points, no preserving jars, no fuss. If jam felt like a commitment, compote is your casual fling — and frankly, you may have just found the one.
Compote dates back to Medieval Europe, its name derived from ‘compositus’, meaning ‘mixture’. Traditionally served as a sweetened, stewed fruit dish, often from waste-bound cut-offs, it’s now just as likely to appear on fancy menus in fancy restaurants.
Cheap, quick, and bake-free, it’s a wonder why it doesn’t make more of an appearance in the average household kitchen. It’s a fast and surefire way to create a refreshing seasonal flavour bomb, easily drizzled over something as simple as fresh cream.
‘Alright, Fiona, but why should I make it’, I hear you sigh. Well well, lucky for you, I've put my best skill to use - I made you a list.
Compote isn’t just good for dessert, no no, it’s uses are varied, much like itself:
Instant Flavour Booster: Just a spoon of it transforms yogurt, toast, pancakes, roasted meats, cocktails, and even cheese boards. One batch = endless uses.
Preserving Tool: The less intimidating introduction to preserving fruit!
Captures Seasonal Produce: You get to capture fruit at its peak and stretch it to the end of the season!
Believe it or not, compote is the fancier name for the easier version. No setting points, no preserving jars, no fuss. If jam felt like a commitment, compote is your casual fling — and frankly, you may have just found the one.
The Breakdown:
I love it when a technique has a definition, and I am happy to tell you, the compote definition is concise:
A preparation of fresh or dried fruit, cooked either whole or in pieces, in a sugar syrup - La Gastronomique
Sound simple? Well, it is. It’s one of those wonders of the culinary world that is very open to interpretation, and to me that means one thing - endless experimentation.
You can use any fruit to make a compote. And even better, the stage of its life doesn’t limit you, it creates opportunity! Got overripe fruit you need to use up? Great for soft, sweeter, juicer compotes. Underripe fruits you don’t know what to do with? They’ll be great at keeping their shape and bringing some tartness. Wonky, bruised, reject fruit at your disposal? Even better for compote - a delicious, low-waste solution!
Compote is essentially a really easy preparation to make anything taste like a dessert. Minimal cooking, minimal prep, but a world of experimental flavour!
- The Fruit
The fruit we choose sets the path we follow. We’ve spoken about pectin a few times now, and, shock horror, we’re going to speak about it again.
Pectin is a long chain carbohydrate, containing negatively charged carboxyl (-COO⁻) groups. It bonds to water in the cell walls, giving fruit its texture. When making jam, we don’t want it to do that anymore. We want pectin to leave the cell walls and bond to each other. This creates a whole new texture, the gel-like quality of jam.
- HOW FOOD WORKS: An Introduction to Jam Making
Unlike in jam making, we’re not that interested in forming a rigid gel from our pectin; compote comes in different shapes and sizes, there are no strict rules here. However, we still want to make use of pectin’s thickening properties to some degree, it just depends on what end result we’re aiming for.
Different fruits have different pectin levels - I think this is best visualised:
Pectin is the mediator in the compote making process. We must be aware of it in order to use it to our advantage. Higher pectin fruits produce naturally thicker compotes. So, for a looser compote, think: less heat, quicker cooking time, less sugar, adding a splash of extra liquid or riper fruit. The inverse is true for higher water content fruits, which tend to be in the lower pectin club (most of the time).
This is a good point to touch on the water-pectin relationship, if we can call it that. High pectin fruit having a low water content and vice vera isn’t exactly a law, but it is a correlation. There are exceptions (underripe plums come to mind), so it may be more helpful to think of it as a ratio.
Pectin gives body, water gives looseness. This is the balancing act you’re performing based on which fruit you choose.
Pectin is like scaffolding, it keeps fruit firm. When cut and cooked, high pectin fruits hold their shape well, making the cut size choice an important one. The softer or lower-pectin your fruit, the easier it disintegrates. If you want chunks of fruit throughout your finished compote, consider how big they’d need to be initially to retain the desired size by the end. Remember, heat and cooking time will hugely affect this, so it’s a good thing to consider before you turn on the stove…
Again, there is no hard or fast rules for what your compote creation must come to be. But knowing these things helps you make informed decisions, emboldens you to create!
- The Sugar
If you’ve been a reader for a while, I’m sure you’re starting to notice a pattern - sugar isn’t just for sweetness. I’ve spoken about this a good bit in pretty much every sweet deep dive because it simply wouldn’t be a deep dive without doing so.
In the name of avoiding repetitiveness and preventing this newsletter from conjuring feelings of PTSD from your Year 10 science class, i’ve created a list of all the different fascinating things sugar is responsible for in your compote:
Creates the syrup: This is actually done in two ways which I found super interesting.
Sugar loves water (regular readers know this by now). It draws water out of fruit (hello osmosis!), dissolves in said water, and thus forms a syrup.
Pectin released from fruit during cooking thickens said syrup, turning it from that fresh, watery, sweet maceration liquid to glossy, syrupy and viscous.
Softens the fruit: Again, from drawing water out of the fruit, structure is lost and the fruit softens as a result.
Influences consistency: More sugar = thicker syrup.
Stabilises colour: Prevents browning, especially in red fruits.
Preserves: Since it’s so good at occupying water molecules, water is less available to entertain microbial growth, which needs water to facilitate decay. More sugar = longer shelf life.
Adds flavour: Bringing sweetness may not be its only role, but it’s certainly an important one.
I decided to carry out some experiments for you, to see how different sugars played out in a strawberry compote.
My thoughts:
No Sugar: Fruit is naturally sweet, so it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that the no sugar control wasn’t half bad. Flavour wise, it was a bit on the dull side, but there was a strong strawberry flavour which really made me question the necessity for such a high sugar content in the traditional base compote ratios. It sort of resembled a child’s tame fruit jelly flavour, sort of watered down a bit with the odd sweet burst from the strawberry chunk.
White Sugar: Honestly? No notes. It’s definitely important to mention the cooking method used, as the high heat process does result in a good amount of caramelisation, but I just think white sugar strikes such a brilliant flavour balance. You get sweetness from the sugar, complexity from the caramelisation, but most importantly, you can still really taste the strawberries!
Brown Sugar: So this was like the white sugar result, but on steroids. A low and slow cooking approach would have helped the texture as the sugar hadn’t fully dissolved, so it was a bit grainy. However, I also just think, if using, use sparingly. The molasses flavour is so strong and so the strawberry can’t really stand up against it. Lovely deep and complex flavours, but unfortunately, the strawberry wasn’t the star.
Honey: Now due what I expect to be the high temperature of cooking, this took on a bit of an acidic tinge. Not in a bad way, but in a tinned fruit way if you know what I mean? This was actually a bit too sweet for me, but I can see how >25% by fruit weight of good quality honey mixed with some freshly chopped fruit and herbs would make for a lovely quick sweet treat.
- The Technique
We can discuss pectin, sugar and water until the cows come home, but the truth of it is, if you don’t pick the right technique, it’s all for nothing.
Heat (or lack thereof) is the final decider. It breaks down the cell walls of the fruit, softening it, and releasing more pectin and water. It evaporates water, concentrating the sugar and thickening the consistency. It activates pectin, further thickening the compote, and adds layer of flavour through Maillard reactions.
Too much heat and you’re left with super soft disintegrated fruit, muted fruit flavour and a super thick syrup. Too little, and you’re left with chunks of fruit with bite in a fresh and watery sauce.
The truth of the matter is, thats what you might want. Different techniques yield very different results, each perfect for an array of different uses. We’ll go into technique to use pairing in more depth in TK, as well as key information needed for each method. For now, let’s talk about experiment findings.
This was very fun to experiment with. It’s incredible what a little heat will do!
I first want to touch on maceration.
Maceration is the process of softening or breaking down a food by soaking it in a liquid. Most commonly known is the process of doing this with cut up fruit by mixing it with sugar, and allowing it to draw out water, creating a syrup. However, you can also do this with an acid or alcohol too.
Maceration doesn’t require heat. It tenderises the fruit, creating a concentrated syrup in tandem from the flavour-dense water drawn out of it by the added sugar. Because no heat is involved, it technically isn’t a compote (argue with La Gastronomique, not me!), but it’s a grey area. Compotes don’t need to be cooked necessarily, but the use of heat is heavily implied. For example, adding a hot sugar syrup would still constitute a compote - but we digress.
The reasons why I think it’s important to discuss are:
It’s a quick tool for making a really flavourful, fresh, loose fruit syrup that can be used, as-is, very successfully. It preserves the colour really well and prevents a mass exodus of water from the fruit once heat is applied, as it’s already been gently drawn out. You may have seen it on menus termed as ‘cold compote’ or ‘fresh compote’, but let’s be honest - who cares. As long as it tastes good, that’s the real focus isn’t it?
It’s sort of like pre-seasoning for fruit. Because the syrup is being formed from flavour-rich liquid, the syrup flavour is both strong and evenly distributed. You’re giving the syrup a chance to develop its profile before heat can evaporate it. Heat can destroy the delicate aromas of fruits, so maceration sort of preserves them, resulting in an end product that tastes much more like real fruit than its counterpart.
Eager to see the real results of different cooking methods, I, of course, did some at home experimenting.
Macerated and Raw: Quite tame flavour-wise compared to the rest as it wasn’t as sweet (water hadn’t been evaporated off from heat to concentrate the syrup). The lemon shone through well, and it was a really refreshing bite compared to the others.
Low and Slow: This resulted in a very thick, jam-like consistency with a puree-like texture. It was also extremely sweet.
Pre-Roasting: Strong sweet strawberry flavour to the point of almost tasting artificial, but in a good way. It definitely has its place as a really great method, but the flavours weren’t complex enough for me to use as the ‘hero’ of a recipe. It was also a little grainy from undissolved sugar.
Quick Simmer: A clear, surefire winner for me. You get everything you could ask for in one bite - complex flavour from the high-heat caramelisation, bursts of freshness from the strawberries, nice varied texture and a glossy syrup. And, even better, it’s the fastest method!
Over on TK i’ll be diving into all the amazing ways to use your compote, all the different variations and what they’re best for, experiments with alcohol, exciting pairing suggestions, key details to nail the methodology and a fool-proof crowd-pleaser of a recipe!
To read the recipe with step by step explanations, subscribe to receive ‘TEST KITCHEN’ where we will also go over the comprehensive cheat sheet for this technique, troubleshooting, key details, graphics and science backed flavour pairings.
Happy eating and thanks for reading!
Fiona :)
Any questions, let me know below!
This was such an interesting read! Just last night I mixed a strawberry compote with chipotle for a sauce and it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g.