Recipe no. 507 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 230.
Ingredients
- sugar
- water
- cinnamon
- plums
Preparation
- Prepare the syrupPut 500 g of sugar into a saucepan with 2 glasses of water.
- Bring to a boilBring to a boil.
- Add the ingredientsAdd a cinnamon stick and 2 dozen fine plums barely ripe.
- Cook without boilingCover the saucepan and keep it an hour on the corner of the stove without boiling.
- TransferTake the plums out into a fruit dish.
- Reduce the syrupReduce the syrup by half.
- Pour the syrupPour the syrup over the plums.
Reboul's text
Put 500 grams of sugar into a saucepan with 2 glasses of water and bring to a boil; add a cinnamon stick and 2 dozen fine plums barely ripe, cover the saucepan and keep it thus for an hour on the corner of the stove, without boiling. Then take the plums out into a fruit dish, reduce the syrup by half and pour it over the plums.
For all other compotes, observe the rule that, for all watery and tender fruits, you should use a fairly concentrated syrup, that is to say a slightly strong one. You will do the opposite for hard fruits.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| sucre | sugar |
| aigo | water |
| pruno | plums |
| casseirolo | saucepan |
| bouie | boil |
| coumpoustié | fruit dish |
| sirop | syrup |
| redurre | reduce |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 507, page 230. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.