Recipe
🥤 DRINK
Kompot
Fruit gently simmered into a lightly sweet drink, served warm in winter or cold in summer.
Polish · easy · serves 6
prep 10 min · cook 30 min
~117 cal · 1g protein · 30g carbs · 0g fat · 3g fiber · 26g sugars · 0g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Kompot is the everyday drink of the Polish home, and it could hardly be simpler: fruit gently simmered in water, sometimes with a little sugar or spice, then cooled. In summer it is made from whatever is ripe, apples, plums, cherries, rhubarb, strawberries; in winter it turns to dried fruit, and a richer, smoky version called kompot z suszu appears on the Christmas Eve table.
Unlike a cordial or a soda, it is only barely sweet, closer to a light, fragrant fruit tea served cold or warm, and the softened fruit is often eaten from the bottom of the glass. It appears at the Polish dinner table as a matter of course, far more often than any fizzy drink.
It is thrift and comfort together, a way to use up a glut of fruit and to put something wholesome in front of the family. Homely and nostalgic, kompot is the taste of a Polish grandmother's kitchen and of countless ordinary dinners.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian, vegan and gluten-, dairy-, egg-, nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
1.5 lb mixed fruit (apple, plum, cherry, or dried fruit)
1/3 cup, to taste sugar (optional)
1/2 lemon
1 stick cinnamon
3 cloves
8 cups water
Instructions
1
Rinse and roughly chop the fruit.
2
Bring the water to a boil with the cinnamon and cloves, adding sugar only if the fruit needs it.
✎ Chef’s note
Work to roughly a pound of fruit per litre of water. Ripe summer fruit often needs no sugar at all, and dried-fruit kompot needs none whatsoever.
3
Add the fruit and cook it briefly: about ten minutes for hard fruit like apples, pears or rhubarb, and no more than three or four minutes for soft berries, cherries and currants.
✎ Chef’s note
This is where kompot usually goes wrong. Half an hour boils the colour and the fresh flavour straight out of the fruit and leaves you with sweet brown water. Dried fruit is the exception and wants a good half hour on a low heat.
4
Add a squeeze of lemon and let it steep off the heat.
5
Serve warm in winter or well-chilled in summer, with or without the fruit.
✎ Chef’s note
There are really two kompots. The summer one is made with fresh fruit and drunk cold; the winter one, kompot z suszu, is made from dried fruit and spices with no added sugar at all and sits on the Christmas table. Before oranges were easy to come by in Poland, dried plums did that work. The cooked fruit is eaten afterwards as a dessert, or blended and spread on bread.
Masovian home tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Masovia (Warsaw). Bigos is a national dish rather than a Warsaw one, and there is more in the pot than cabbage and meat: forest mushrooms, juniper, allspice, and often prunes or plum butter. Its best-known appearance in print is in Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz of 1834, which has it being reheated out in the forest.
🗺️
Poland. Wigilia, the Christmas Eve supper, is the year's set piece: no meat, twelve dishes for the twelve Apostles, and nobody sits down until someone spots the first star. Beetroot barszcz with mushroom-filled uszka opens it, carp in several guises follows, and kutia of barley, poppy seed and honey brings it to a close.
🌍
Europe. Europe has written a great deal of its food into law. A regulation of 1992 created the protected designation of origin and the protected geographical indication, tying a name to a place and a method, and an EU evaluation published in 2021 counted more than three thousand registered names across those schemes, from cheeses and hams down to particular shapes of bread.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Poland
Pierogi Ruskie (Potato & Cheese Dumplings)Tender dumplings stuffed with potato and farmer's cheese, finished in butter with golden onions.
Żurek (Sour Rye Soup)Poland’s tangy, smoky sour rye soup, built on a fermented rye starter, simmered with white sausage and marjoram, and crowned with a halved egg.
Bigos (Hunter’s Stew)Sauerkraut and fresh cabbage slow-cooked with assorted meats, mushrooms, and prunes, Poland’s national stew, better each day.
Browse all Poland recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Keep chilled and covered, and enjoy within 2 to 3 days.
Make it a Poland meal
Bigos (Hunter’s Stew)Dinner
SernikDessert
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Drinks
Frequently asked questions
What is Kompot?
Fruit gently simmered into a lightly sweet drink, served warm in winter or cold in summer.
Where does Kompot come from?
Kompot is a Polish dish from Masovia (Warsaw), Poland.
Can Kompot be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Kompot recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Kompot safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Kompot take to make?
About 40 minutes total (10 minutes prep, 30 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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