Chef Lesia
Berezovyi Sik (березовий сік, birch sap drink)
Birch sap looks like water until you taste it: cold, faintly sweet, mineral, and gone almost as soon as spring admits it has arrived.
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Kompot (компот, fresh-fruit compote)
Created by
Apricots split in the pot, cherries bleed ruby into the water, and suddenly you have summer by the jugful. Kompot is fruit, water, patience, and no tradition of a small pot.
Beverages
Ukrainian
Comfort Food
Picnic
Budget Friendly
10 min
Active Time
20 min cook•1 hr 30 min total
YieldAbout 3 litres, enough for 8 glasses
The color comes first: pale gold from apricots, then cherry-red blooming through the pot like someone dropped a silk scarf into clear water. Kompot is not juice and it is not jam. It is what you make when the fruit is good enough to perfume the whole room, but too plentiful to be precious about.
In the Kherson steppe, this belongs to the long table, the picnic blanket, the litnya kuhnia, the summer kitchen, where a pot cools by the open window while everyone pretends they are not already drinking from it. The fruit should only just give itself up. Simmer it until the smell changes, from raw orchard to soft honeyed stone fruit, then stop. Boil it hard and you bully the fruit into dullness.
The one why is simple: add the honey after the pot cools a little. Hot water takes sweetness, but gentler warmth keeps the flower smell in the honey and lets the apricots and cherries speak first. Aunt Nadia wrote only, "not too sweet, Lesiu, it's for drinking," which is exactly right. A glass should leave you wanting another.
Kompot entered Ukrainian kitchens through the wider European compote tradition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but home cooks made it their own as a drink rather than a spoon dessert. It sits beside older Ukrainian uzvar, the dried-fruit drink of winter and Christmas Eve, while kompot belongs especially to fresh summer fruit: cherries, apricots, plums, apples, pears, whatever the garden or market gives too generously.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
ripe apricots
Quantity
500g
halved and pitted
sour or sweet cherries
Quantity
400g
stemmed, pits left in or removed
apple
Quantity
1 large
cored and sliced
water
Quantity
3 litres
honey
Quantity
3 to 5 tablespoons
to taste
lemon peel (optional)
Quantity
1 strip
mint or blackcurrant leaf (optional)
Quantity
1 small sprig
sea salt
Quantity
small pinch
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| ripe apricotshalved and pitted | 500g |
| sour or sweet cherriesstemmed, pits left in or removed | 400g |
| applecored and sliced | 1 large |
| water | 3 litres |
| honeyto taste | 3 to 5 tablespoons |
| lemon peel (optional) | 1 strip |
| mint or blackcurrant leaf (optional) | 1 small sprig |
| sea salt | small pinch |
Equipment Needed
- •A 4 litre stockpot
- •A long wooden spoon
- •A large glass jug or enamel pitcher
Instructions
- 1
Prepare the fruit
Rinse the fruit well. Halve the apricots and take out the stones, stem the cherries, and slice the apple. You can leave cherry pits in for a faint almond edge, but warn people if you serve the fruit in the glasses.
- 2
Start the pot
Put the water, apple, cherries, lemon peel if using, and a tiny pinch of salt into a big pot. Bring it up slowly until the water colors and the cherries begin to soften. You want a lazy movement in the pot, not a rolling boil.
- 3
Add apricots
Add the apricots once the cherries have started staining the water. Let everything murmur until the apricots slump at the edges and the smell changes from raw fruit to warm orchard. The fruit should still look like fruit, not collapse into a jammy mess.
Apricots are softer than cherries, so they go in later. That small order of things keeps the drink clear-tasting instead of muddy. - 4
Sweeten gently
Pull the pot off the heat and let it cool until it is warm, not hot. Stir in three tablespoons of honey, taste, then add more only if the fruit asks for it. Kompot should refresh you, not coat your mouth.
- 5
Cool and serve
Add the mint or blackcurrant leaf if using, then leave the fruit to steep as the pot cools. Strain it for a clean jug or leave the fruit in, which is what happens at my table because someone will fish out the apricots anyway. Chill well and serve in big glasses with condensation running down the sides.
Chef Tips
- •Use what is ripe. Apricots and cherries give a southern summer feeling, but plums, apples, pears, peaches, or berries all make honest kompot.
- •In August we'd be drowning in fruit; in January we open jars or use dried fruit and call the winter version closer to uzvar. That's not a poor cousin, that's the calendar talking.
- •Do not boil the fruit hard. The forgiving part is the fruit mix; the step that matters is gentle heat, so the drink tastes bright instead of cooked flat.
- •If using honey, add it off the heat. If using sugar, it can go in earlier with the water, but start lightly. You can sweeten a jug; you can't unsweeten one.
Advance Preparation
- •Kompot is best made several hours ahead so the fruit can steep and the drink can chill properly.
- •It keeps in the fridge for 3 days. The fruit softens as it sits, which is not a tragedy; spoon it over yogurt or eat it cold from a bowl.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 500g)
Calories
110 calories
Total Fat
0 g
Saturated Fat
0 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
0 g
Cholesterol
0 mg
Sodium
35 mg
Total Carbohydrates
27 g
Dietary Fiber
3 g
Sugars
23 g
Protein
2 g
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