Rumpot will make a spirited dessert

Press, 26 December 1984, Page 13

Rumpot will make a spirited dessert

This is an easy and delicious, if expensive, way to preserve fruit The separate fruits lose their identity, but the resulting dark reddish brown fruit mixture can be served alone, with whipped cream or icecream, or mixed with sliced fresh fruit (kiwifruit and bananas) to make a well flavoured, interesting, strongly alocholic fruit salad. Made with care and kept under good conditions a rumpot will keep at least six months. But if the

alcohol is diluted too much with fruit juice or water, or if it is top warm, it may ferment and spoil. You can use any combination of fruit you please. Traditionally, in the northern hemisphere, a rumpot is started in early summer with strawberries, raspberries, and cherries, finished with autumn fruit, left to mature for a few weeks or months, and consumed at Christmas.

You can please yourself — a rumpot fruit salad would be a good finish for a midwinter party. Put a cup of sugar and a cup of rum in a very clean large jar or lead-free crock. Put in a layer of clean dry fruit, slicing or halving larger fruit, peeling or avoiding adding leatheryskinned fruit, and removing, stones if practicable. Make sure there is enough liquid to cover the fruit. If not, add more rum.

Cover firmly with plastic film or a lid. Store in a cool dark place and add more fruit and rum as available. Do not add bruised, wet or mushy fruit. Sprinkle each addition with sugar. After the last addition, cover securely and leave to mature for a few weeks. If fermentation starts, add

more rum and refrigerate. NOTE: Replace rum with brandy if desired. The traditional German Rumpot recipes usually call for large additions of sugar with each addition of fruit. Add the same weight of sugar as fruit. These very sweet mixtures keep for longer. SUGGESTED FRUITS: Strawberries, raspberries, loganberries, boysenberries, cherries, plums, peaches, pears, pineapple, hothouse grapes. Do hot add black currants, citrus fruit pith or large quantities of watery fruits such as red currants, melons, grapes with semiliquid insides etc. PRECAUTIONS: Watch temperatures carefully. Take extra care during late summer and hot weather. Last year I made six preserving jars of Rumpot. In March, the fruit in the jar to which I was adding rum and late summer fruits developed an offflavour, and I had to throw it out. The other bottles, filled, covered, and stored in a cooler place, remained in excellent condition. From how on I will work with smaller jars, refrigerate the “working” jar during February and March, and refrigerate the filled jars until I want to use them.