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Oranges and Pine Apple
Take three or four good sweet oranges, slice them very thin without peeling, cut in small pieces, then pare one pine apple, cut in small pieces, add sugar to taste; after these are mixed together, add one wine glass of best brandy and the same of water, and they are ready for the table. (Mix thoroughly.)
A macerated fruit salad from the era when brandy stood in for both flavouring and preservative. Two details need attention: the wine glass measure and the instruction not to peel the oranges.
- The peel questionRead literally, the oranges go in skin and all. Some period fruit dishes do use thin-sliced whole orange, so this may be meant as written; if you would rather not eat the rind, slice the fruit thin so the sections hold together, then trim the rind from each slice before cutting it up, keeping any juice that runs out.
- A wine glassIn nineteenth-century American cookbooks a wine glass is a standard measure of about 2 fluid ounces, or a quarter cup. So roughly 1/4 cup brandy and 1/4 cup water for the whole bowl.
- PineapplePeriod pineapples were likely smaller and more fibrous than today's Gold varieties. Cut out the core, which stays woody even after macerating, and expect a modern fruit to be sweeter, so add the sugar in stages.
- Sugar to tasteStart with about 2 tablespoons for three or four oranges and a pineapple, stir, and wait ten minutes before judging. The sugar draws out juice and the mixture tastes noticeably sweeter once it has sat.
- Resting timeThe recipe implies immediate service, but half an hour to two hours in the refrigerator lets the syrup form and the brandy soften. Beyond a day the orange sections go mushy.
- Yield and servingEnough for six to eight small dishes. Serve cold in glass bowls with a thin cookie or a spoonful of cream; the diluted brandy is the whole point of the dish, so do not drain the liquid off.
Fresh pineapple in a supper dish signals a household with money and a rail connection: through the middle of the nineteenth century pineapples arrived in northern American cities by sailing ship from the Caribbean and were expensive, and it was faster steam shipping and refrigerated freight in the last decades of the century that brought them within reach of ordinary cooks. Recipes of this kind — sliced fruit, sugar, a glass of spirits — belong to the light supper rather than the dinner dessert, the informal evening meal that books of this period treat as a separate problem from the heavy midday table. The brandy does more than flavour: it holds the cut fruit from browning and turns the sugar and juice into a syrup, the same logic behind ambrosia.