29 August 2009

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s Rumtopf…


Rumtopf?

What is a Rumtopf?

Well in this case a Rumtopf is the name of the ceramic jar that contains the stuff. Sometimes this stuff is referred to as “Officer’s Jam” or “Bachelor’s Liqueur”. Actually I had been, rather ignorantly, calling the stuff Rumtopf. It was not until I received a proper Rumtopf from a woman at work that I truly understood.

Confused yet?

Well just set back fer a spell, and lemme do some ‘splainin’…

A friend of mine had told me about Rumtopf, and I made an attempt to create one without knowing what I was doing or even what it was supposed to be called. Something I actually do quite often, believe it or not. He had told me that (some) German people kept a jar under their sink (or in a nearby cupboard or something). Into this jar would go whatever fruit that was in the kitchen at the time and was past its prime. The fruit would be covered in rum, and was left until needed. Once in a while the person would spoon out some fruit and put it onto a desert of some sort. Once in a while the person would pour him or herself a little glass of the liquid (booze).

This would just go on throughout the year. One would add some fruit when they had it, or add some more rum when it was needed. Sounds like a good idea, and it is simple enough. Hell, lots of time I have fruit laying around that is on verge of going bad, so I tried it. And it worked out pretty well. I added apples, peaches, dates, kumquats, grapes, even some walnuts (shelled of course). Every once in a while, I would grab the jar from the liquor cabinet and spoon some of the goods onto some vanilla ice cream. And damn was it good!

I decided that I was going to start a new one this year, and instead of rum I would use … well … Bourbon, of course. Wild Turkey to be specific. I used an old pasta jar that I had, and started adding fruit to it. It wasn’t until later that another friend told me that you are not supposed use apples. It turns out that apples are specified as something to NOT use.

Oh well, it was fine with apples last year and I’ve already added them. Oh, to hell with it! I’m not going to throw out this grand experiment just because of some apples.

So I was looking in one of my books about preserving food, and I saw the Rumtopf listed under preservation with alcohol. According to this book, you were supposed to add and equal weight of sugar each time you added the fruit. So add a pound of strawberries AND a pound of sugar and put enough rum to cover it, then when you add a pound of cherries you are supposed to add ANOTHER pound of sugar and rum to cover it.

Holy crap that’s a lot of sugar! I hadn’t added any sugar last year and it was good. So this year I added a bit of sugar each time I added fruit, but nothing near what they were calling for.

One day when a few of us were traveling back to the office from a review meeting, and I mentioned something about my Rumtopf. Although I knew by now that it was just the name of the jar, I was still referring to the stuff as Rumtopf. A German woman colleague was in the car, and she said that she had a couple of Rumtopfs and would bring one into work and give it to me. “Great” I said, ‘Thanks!”

Well she was out of the office for a couple of weeks, and I had forgotten about her offer. Then one day this shows up on my desk…

Rumtopf

“Holy shit! Are you sure you want to give this away? Thank you so much!”

And there are even directions on the back…

Rumtopf Directions

If you can’t read German, it basically tells you to put the fruit into it as they come into season, add an equal amount of sugar, and cover with rum. It also tells you not to add certain fruits, and yes apple is one of them. Well, your not supposed to stir the fruit mixture, so there is not going to be any transfer of fruit from my old pasta jar into this new beauty. It’s also too late in the season to start a proper one, since a bunch of the fruits are already out of season.

So next year will be the inaugural season of my proper ceramic Rumtopf (without apples).

This year my second attempt will have to do…

Tony's Bourbon-topf

And my buddy Tim is seriously covetous of my new Rumtopf!


6 comments:

PMG said...

T,

That is the best old fruit idea I ever heard. What about bananas? I would assume not.

If you can get it translated the instructions translated for me.

Good to hear from you.

PMG

Anonymous said...

What I'm not clear on is why not use apples? Do they turn poison or something?

-Steven.

-Tony said...

Steven, I think they don't add them because they have a tendency to turn to mush. I never thought about it, but a friend here pointed out that you don't see canned apples. Peaches, pears, sure ... but not apples.

~~louise~~ said...

Hi Tony,
Just popped by in search of Rumtopf for a post I'm doing for National Brandied Fruit Day tomorrow. (Yes, I know, it is rather silly that it's in the middle of October but hey, I don't make this stuff up:)

Anyway, I hope you don't mind but I would love to include this link in my post. Actually, if you are feeling extremely generous, I would love to include that there jar of glistening fruit of yours also. Best you hang on to the crock though. It is stunning. How cool it was gifted to you:)

Thanks so much for sharing. I'm glad I stopped by. This calls for a bookmark!!!

-Tony said...

Louise - Sure you can link and use the picture. Just make sure you give me credit for it.
Thanks for stopping by.

~~louise~~ said...

Hi Tony,
Thank you ever so much. I just posted it for Brandied Fruit Day. Your picture sure did add to the festivities. I really appreciate it. Thanks again, here's the link.