Spike Your Holidays With Boozy Fruit Compote

It was 50-some years ago, but Karl-Joseph Fuchs remembers his family’s first taste of rum pot like it was yesterday.

“It was May 27. My brother and I gave one to my father for his birthday with two bottles of rum,” said the 70-year-old retired chef of the strong yet sweet flavor. “We said, ‘We’ll come back in the winter and eat rum pot.’”

The resulting boozy, fruity mix was so delightful that he decided to start making the dessert himself . Since then he’s served it every year over three decades at his family’s sixth-generation hotel and restaurant, Spielweg, in Germany’s Black Forest.

Rum pot, known as rumtopf in German, is a traditional compote dessert of fruits, rum, and sugar best known in Germany. It also appears in parts of Austria and Denmark. Traditionally served over vanilla ice cream, the dish was once a popular means of preserving fresh garden fruit.

“It is a bright palette of fruits, an entire (summer) season at once,” explained Fuchs of the dish. “And then all that hard work is rewarded in one go at Christmas.”

Layer by layer, ripe fruits are added to a large crock. The process takes place over the course of several months, beginning in June with the first strawberries. It continues according to what comes into season: Cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, blackberries, and raspberries are all common additions until the final product emerges.

Once a staple of German home cooking

Rumtopf was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s by West Germany's famously fast-talking actor turned TV chef, Clemens Wilmenrod. On his cooking show, Please Be at the Table in 10 Minutes, Wilmenrod presented quick, easy meals with charismatic flair.

“The fruit preserved in rum spreads its aroma of warmth and fidelity throughout the house,” he waxed on about Rumtopf, according to Der Spiegel. “When you make the occasional trip down to the cellar to perform some terribly mundane chore, there the fruit is, standing in the corner in its colorful earthen jug, beckoning like an old friend. How could anyone even think of leaving the cellar behind without having greeted that silent, delectable companion, waiting patiently in its dark corner?”

 In Germany, rumtopf crocks are sometimes known as family heirlooms, with elaborate carvings and decorations.

Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Micah Marie Morton

At the time the wealth of Germany’s industrial “economic miracle” was well underway, although the trauma of wartime food insecurity still lingered on. Wilmenrod’s recipes, such as rumtopf, spoke to a generation that was curious about discovering new ingredients and flavors yet saw it important that food never go to waste.

Some of Wilmenrod’s most well-known recipes included the “ground meat hedgehog” (minced pork studded with pretzels or raw onion slices as spikes), canned white asparagus wrapped in boiled ham, and the Toast Hawaii, an open-face sandwich of ham, cheese, and canned pineapple.

Chef Cathrin Brandes, a cookbook author and chef who runs the restaurant Das Rote Haus on Hiddensee, one of Germany’s Baltic Sea islands, remembers a Caribbean-esque rendition of rumpot served on her family’s Christmas table one year.

“In the 1960s my mother’s father put in pineapple and mandarin orange, which my father’s father hated,” she says. “A huge fight erupted between the family about how to do the rumtopf right.”

A labor of love

According to Fuchs, a rum pot requires patience and care.

His “rule of thumb” recipe is 500 grams of fruit, 250 grams of brown unrefined sugar, and an honest pour of rum.

“You need enough alcohol that it preserves the fruit so it doesn’t break into pieces,” he explains. “Rather be too gutsy and a little drunk and be on the sure side of things.”

If it’s too strong in the end, reduced fruit juice can always be added for balance. So Fuchs recommends a high-proof rum of at least 54% ABV—white or dark doesn’t matter—but he says up to 80% is much better. It doesn’t need to be high-quality since the recipe requires five or six bottles, he says.

What’s most important is the crockware. In Germany these vessels are sometimes known as family heirlooms, with elaborate carvings and decorations. Stoneware is the best, but ceramic and earthenware also work well—although any food-safe container with a lid, stored in a dark place, will do.

When it comes to the ingredients, berries are the best for rum pot, according to Fuchs. Grapes can be used but the skin should be broken up a bit with a fork so the alcohol can work its magic on the flesh beneath. Plums should also be halved and pitted to also speed up the maceration process. The fruits should be ripe and in good condition—“no white or green spots, no mold.” Fuchs recommends a quick wash but not to let the fruit sit in water (“that will ruin the taste”).

Some people like to add vanilla, clove, or cinnamon, but this is a question of preference. “If I have a high-quality rum, it’s not necessary to add anything else,” says Fuchs. “It tastes good, but it adulterates the taste of the rum.”

Over the months while it sits, it’s important not to disturb what’s inside the pot unless adding more fruit—and only to go in with a clean fork and double-washed hands. Keep the lid on as much as possible, and by no means should a breadcrumb drop inside, as the yeast will spoil the entire concoction.

A chance for boozy rediscovery

With changing grocery shopping and cooking practices, Rumtopf has fallen out of fashion in Germany in recent years. Fuchs says many restaurants don’t serve it anymore because of the time and effort it takes. “It’s a normal dessert that doesn’t take much creativity,” he says. “You know, it doesn’t look like a world-wonder sensation—but it does taste very good.”

Despite this, as a renewed curiosity in preservation and fermentation techniques has emerged among younger generations, some Germans are turning back to their crockware.

Brandes rediscovered rum pot when writing a book about fermentation a few years ago. She brought her parent’s Rumtopf crock, once a wedding present, back to Germany from their home in Spain and began making it again with farmers market fruits. “I wasn’t sure (the crock) would survive in my luggage,” she laughed. “The rumptof does taste very good, although my grandmother says it would be more beautiful with garden fruit.”

As for Karl-Joseph, he can still enjoy a rum pot every year in the Spielweg family restaurant, which his daughter, the well-known German chef Viktoria Fuchs, now runs. And even after all these years, he, like their many regular guests, still looks forward to it.

Rumtopf

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