Compote is fruit cooked in sugar and water until soft, then eaten cold. The fruit still looks like fruit — pieces in a light syrup — not a thick spread. It is a rather European dessert word, more at home on a café menu than in a school lunchbox. Though actually it is not jam: jam is cooked longer, mashed, and meant for bread. It is not a fresh fruit salad either, because the fruit has been cooked. In Eastern Europe a close cousin is kompot, often drunk as a sweet fruit drink from the same idea of fruit simmered in water. Funny, but true: this fancy bowl and the garden word compost are old doublets — both go back to things “put together.” Nobody serving dessert wants you to hear that.

糖煮水果（冷食；不是果醬）