C’est la manière de faire composte. Nota qu’il fault commencier à la Sainct Jehan qui est vingt-quatrième jour de Juing.
Le Ménagier de paris, 312
This is perhaps my favorite recipe in Le Ménagier de Paris. It ends up being delicious, but it borders on absurd, and is tucked away in the section of “Some little extras…” This amazingly complex and ostentatious recipe is one of the few that is fully detailed in the guide. By the author’s direction, this compote would take a full calendar year to make, relying on the preserves of a wide variety of nuts, fruits, and vegetables in very specific points in their season. As modern cooks we are able to escape most of these restrictions, but oddly enough, his cardinal direction remains unavoidable: One must begin by St. John’s Day, which is the 24th of June.
On Green Walnuts…
In reality, I discovered, that this is the ideal start date for some – even now, but climate change has shifted this back by a few weeks for those of us in the United States. The very first ingredient, Green Walnuts, is only available during a short window, and they will not arrest their ripening for anyone. I was very fortunate to find that Green English Walnuts can be purchased from Handy Farms in May and in June. I suggest, if you aim to recreate this, that you do beginning in May. My Green Walnuts arrived somewhat too ripe, being more nut-like and less fruit-like than desired. I am getting ahead myself, but this is intentional, as this particular point is crucial to the recreation – the remaining process can happen any time thanks to modern agriculture.
Calculations
On the winning side for accuracy, the author gives us specific measurements, which is a blessing not often bestowed in period cookery books. It seems he was quite specific about how this is to be done. On the losing side for your intrepid culinary archaologist, this meant diving into my least favorite subject (despite its absolute necessity in my trade) arithmetic. The original recipe calls for 500 Green Walnuts to begin. He gives less specific instructions on quantities of other things, but I have the impression the Green Walnuts are meant to be the star, so I used all of the produce in equal quantities. I did not, however, want to begin with what would have been 35 pounds of each item. Instead, I reduced everything to a very manageable 3 pounds – based on my count of 50 Green Walnuts that arrived in my three and a half pound order. As it happened, these amounts also very conveniently fit in my one-quart jars, one jar per product. In the end, this still produced a huge amount of product, but I was able to serve it to 120 eager guests.
For the spices, we’re given specific weights, for which I am grateful, but the common measure for spices at the time was Apothecaries’ Weight. Fortunately, the Ounce is consistent between this scale and our modern scale, but a Pound is comprised of only 12 Ounces. A “quatern” for example, being a quarter-pound, would be three Ounces rather than our modern four. Nevertheless, I persevered, and with my recipe available no one will be forced to do this math ever again unless it pleases them to do so. On the Highland Hearthglow A.S. LIX website, I have posted my event-sized recipe, which I have scaled down for the recipe collection here. An intrepid home cook can now make just a few pounds of this Compote, and not 20, nor 200.
The Multitude of Preserves
As I mentioned, it takes nearly a year to make the recipe due to specific seasonality of green walnuts, unripe peaches and unripe pears, even in the modern world which has largely freed itself from the confines of local agriculture. It also requires an absolute embarrassment of spices in both quantity and variety. And it is also extremely labor intensive, with the preserves each requiring attention in the form of boiling, skimming, and boiling again every few days for a month. Despite the use of gold leaf, and talk of peacocks redressed in their skin elsewhere, I believe this is one of the most truly ostentatious dishes documented in our contemporary sources, even in modern times. Without access to a food safety lab, I cannot make claims about the successful preservation of the product using the method described – however, based on my understanding of water activity and sugar concentration, this does in theory produce a product well, well below the threshold of shelf stability.
The General Process
The one thing that makes this project not entirely overwhelming is that we are, for the most part, doing the exact same process repeatedly for our main ingredients. I list them below and note the time of year we are expected to collect them:
- Green Walnuts (St. John’s Day, June 24th)
- Unripe Pears (June)
- Unripe Peaches (July)
- Calabash (Late Summer or Early Fall)
- Turnips (All Saint’s Day, November 1st)
- Carrots (Also on All Saint’s Day)
- Parsley Roots (St. Andrew’s Day, November 30th)
- Fennel Roots (Also around St. Andrew’s Day)
The Green Walnuts require a special process before the preservation begins, and then from there all of the ingredients are treated largely the same way. The walnuts are to be peeled completely, pierced each in three places, and set to soak in spring water for 10 to 12 days, changing the water daily. The result, as the author indicates, is that they will turn completely black and lose their bitterness. Secondarily, the water each day will also turn black, and will become quite bitter. This is due to extraction of Juglone which is a bitter, somewhat toxic compound that is naturally occurring in all parts of the Walnut tree. This is a unique adaptation, we now know, by which Walnut trees poison competing flora around them. Once the soaking is complete, the Walnuts are drained and dried, and we proceed with the same set of preservation steps as we do for each successive product.
To begin, the product is covered in lukewarm honey and allowed to soak for two or three days. This process draws out a great deal of water from the product through osmosis. (This step could be accomplished in modern times much more cost effectively by burying the produce in granulated white sugar and discarding it all after two or three days instead.) After this initial soaking, that honey is discarded and the product is once again submerged in enough fresh, lukewarm honey to cover it. (Each product is prepared in a slightly different way for this process, which I will detail below.) The product is then stirred two or three times each day for four days. On the fourth day, we drain the product from the honey, heat the honey to boiling and skim it, adding more if necessary, then return the product to the honey once it has cooled again to lukewarm.
On my first attempt, my fruits fermented. I thought perhaps this was the intended outcome, but I realized that the repeated boiling would be entirely counterproductive to that, and would result in more of a pickle than a preserve. For that reason, in my second attempt, with my modern knowledge of microbiology, I avoided opening and stirring my sanitized containers any more than was necessary – i.e. only to perform the boiling ritual every four days. This method produced faultless, candied products for each of the fruits and vegetables, with concentrations of sugar well above 68%, the threshold for preservation. Most of my products measured closer to the 75% range.
We are to repeat this process for a month, which is about seven or eight total repetitions. What occurs during this time is the slow exchange of any remaining water in the product with the sugars in the honey, a form of candying. By the end of the process, we are left with an extremely viscous honey mixture and partially translucent fruit from the sugar penetration. We’re further instructed to remove each preserve to an earthenware pot or cask, and stir them weekly until used.
Preparing the Other Products
As I mentioned above, each product is subjected to a slightly different treatment before beginning the honey soaking process. These are as follows:
- Green Walnuts – Peeled, soaked, pierced in three places, and studded with Clove and Ginger
- Unripe Pears – Unpeeled, Quartered and Parboiled
- Unripe Peaches – Peeled and Cut into Pieces
- Calabash – Peeled, Seeds Removed, Quartered and Parboiled
- Turnips Peeled, Quartered, and Parboiled
- Carrots – Scraped and Cut into Small Pieces
- Parsley Roots – Scraped and Cut into Small Pieces
- Fennel Roots – Scraped and Cut into Small Pieces
For the purposes of this project, I cut all of my produce into bite-sized pieces. This made them much easier to handle, but also much more practical to be able to serve small portions to guests at the event while allowing them to taste various ingredients.
Bringing it All Together
Once we have our eight preserves, which have taken us, at minimum, from June until January to prepare, we then have the option to actually make the compote since these are just a handful of the many ingredients required. Among the additional set of required ingredients are newly fresh grapes. It does not take an agricultural genius, which the author was not, to know that there are no fresh grapes available in January. I believe, always operating under the assumption that our forebears were brilliant and creative people, that an astute housewife would read this recipe and know that no matter when she begins, the Compote itself cannot be served except in August or perhaps September.
I was unable to verify when a “Digne grape” comes ripe, but it is certainly in that window as all grapes are. And so, when we begin in June (if we were bound by seasonal agriculture) we will not serve our Compote until August or September of the following year. Therefore, not only must we have the full year and resources to collect all of these things, as well as the enormous quantity of honey needed to preserve them, we must also have the means and space to store it all. In the original quantities, it amounts to about 30 pounds of each product, and upwards of 150 pounds of honey. And we have not yet spoken of the spices.
Once we have prepared all of our many preserves and secured our fresh Digne grapes, we will include nearly every spice known to Christendom at the time. To all of the preserves and the fresh grapes, we will add: Brown Mustard Seed, Anise Seed, Coriander Seed, Horseradish, Cloves, Cinnamon, Long Pepper, Ginger, Nutmeg, Grains of Paradise, Saffron, Red Sandalwood, Salt, Red Wine, Red Wine Vinegar, and Port. In total, a Bourgeois’s ransom of about seven modern pounds of dried spices. Since I had purchased a very specific book on the accounting of spices I amused myself (and hopefully readers) with a breakdown of the adjust cost of spices and how much our event menu would have cost – Well over $3,000 in 2024 for the spices alone. Using those same calculations, the recipe as-written in Le Ménagier de Paris would cost tens of thousands of dollars in today’s money. Certainly, a Peacock carried in by strong men, dressed in its skin and breathing fire was a sight – but nothing succeeds like excess when the audience readily knows the difference in price between a peacock and four servants versus seven or eight pounds of imported spices.
Serving the Compote
Once our 25 previously mentioned ingredients have all been combined, we have not quite done enough. The one menu on which the author includes the Compote, as a dessert I point out, we are to serve the compote topped with red and white Comfits, sugar-spice pellets, which we also call dragées. Fortunately, the culture of India has kept these alive for us and candied fennel seeds were readily available. We are instructed to serve this along with rissoles, flans, figs, dates, grapes, and hazelnuts – further reinforcing the idea that while we began in June and finished in January, we will not serve this until the following summer when these other fruits and nuts are ripe. (Yes, everything except for the grapes could be dried and stored, but these are specifically fresh grapes mentioned in the original manuscript.)
Reflections
Making this dish was one of the most arduous, but also most satisfying pieces of the whole massive Highland Hearthglow project. From the beginning, I quite frankly expected it to be awful. However, my thesis remains that our ancestors ate good food they thought was delicious, and in the end, I can agree with them. This was an absolute mess to make, and I would be remiss not to once again thank my loving fiancé for enduring it. Every four days for three months (since I did this in two batches, plus the secret third batch where I replaced earlier products that spoiled) our kitchen was inundated with stickiness – mostly on the dishes, but one can’t entirely avoid getting it on one’s hands and therefore everywhere, as well as the floor from drips.
I began in June, and while most of the products seemed fine – the pears being especially delicious – there is no world in which I suggest candying Turnips except for the purpose of this recipe. I quite like Turnips when they are boiled and/or fried (such as in this recipe) but the stench they create through the preservation process is unenviable. Still, for science, I persisted and did exactly as directed. I did not mix the final product until the very day before the event, so I did not get a chance to taste this until mid-January. I knew that if it wasn’t delicious, it would certainly be interesting, and that should be part of the experience of a well-interpreted period feast. In the end, it was delicious, though with an overwhelming variety of flavors for the modern palate. I would liken it to condiments like Chutney and certainly would not serve it as a Dessert in the 21st Century as they did in the 14th. Our guests turned out to be enthralled by it, ultimately bearing out my thesis regarding the tastes of our ancestors, and the bravery and curiosity of my fellow adventurers.
Like most recipes on this site which originate from French or English manuscripts, the interpretation is based primarily on my own understanding of the source document and my experience as a professional Chef. I have provided a scaled-down recipe for the home cook in the Recipes section of the website. If you plan to take this harrowing journey yourself, please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions about sourcing ingredients or further details of the process.