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Raspberries and Strawberries
Cap the fruit; wash before capping. They should not lay in the water long, neither should the fruit be washed too much. Strawberries wilt very soon after the sugar is put upon them; if to be kept any length of time it is better not to cap and sugar them until a couple of hours before serving; then put alternate layers of sugar and fruit in a glass dish, and put in a cool place until wanted.
Pineapples may be sliced very thin, mixed with powdered sugar, and placed on ice until ready to serve. Pineapples should always be sliced lengthwise, in order to avoid the hard cores in the center.
This is less a recipe than a set of rules for serving fresh berries at their best, from an era when a bowl of sugared strawberries counted as a dessert course. The advice still holds; only the vocabulary has aged.
- The hinge: sugar lastSugar draws juice out of berries within minutes, and the fruit collapses. Hull and sugar no more than a couple of hours ahead, as directed, and keep the dish cold until it goes to the table.
- "Cap" the fruitCapping is hulling — removing the green calyx and the pale core beneath it. The order matters: wash first, cap second, so water cannot enter the hollow left by the hull.
- WashingA brief rinse in a colander, then drained well. Berries soaked in a bowl take up water, which dilutes the juice and turns the flesh slack.
- "Powdered sugar"In nineteenth-century American cookbooks this generally meant granulated sugar ground fine, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match; ordinary granulated works but dissolves more slowly.
- "Placed on ice"Keep the fruit in the coldest place available; refrigeration is the modern equivalent. The text has it stay cold right up to serving.
- Slicing pineapple lengthwiseThe woody core runs the length of the fruit as a central cylinder, so lengthwise slabs confine it to one edge, where it is easily trimmed away. Peel and dig out the eyes first.
- QuantityNo yield is given. A quart of strawberries with two to three tablespoons of sugar serves four; a medium pineapple serves four to six.
Sugared raw berries in a glass dish belong to the late-Victorian and Edwardian table, where fresh fruit was strictly seasonal and worth presenting on its own. Strawberries appeared for a few weeks in early summer and did not travel well, so cookbooks of the period concentrate on handling rather than cooking: how to wash, when to sugar, how to keep the dish cold in an icebox. Pineapple sits nearby for a different reason elievmore available through the nineteenth century by faster steamships. Placing the two together says something about what counted as fancy: not elaboration, but fruit good enough to serve plain, chilled, and lightly sweetened.