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Pine-Apple Pie
A cup of sugar, a half cup butter, one of sweet cream, five eggs, one pine-apple grated; beat butter and sugar to a cream, add beaten yolks of eggs, then the pine-apple and cream, and, lastly, the beaten whites whipped in lightly. Bake with under crust only. -Mrs. Wm. Smith, Jacksonville, Florida.
A rich baked custard pie of the 1870s, closer to a chess or transparent pie than to anything in a modern pineapple can. Two things decide whether it works: how the fresh fruit is treated, and how gently it is baked.
- Cook the pineapple firstFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that digests egg protein and will leave the filling loose or weepy. Simmer the grated fruit and its juice for about five minutes and let it cool before it goes near the eggs; canned crushed pineapple, well drained, is already heat-treated and needs nothing.
- "Sweet cream"Unsoured cream, not sweetened. Use heavy cream, one cup.
- One pineapple gratedA whole trimmed pineapple grated on a box grater yields a great deal of pulp and juice for a single pie, and the amount varies with the size of the fruit. Drain to about 1 1/2 cups of pulp and reserve the rest, or the filling will not set.
- OvenStart the pie at 425F for about 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 325F for 35 to 45 minutes. The center should still wobble slightly when the pie leaves the oven; it firms as it cools.
- "Bake with under crust only"A single bottom crust, no lid and no lattice. Blind-bake the shell 10 minutes with weights before filling, since a wet custard on raw pastry soaks through.
- EggsNineteenth-century eggs are generally thought to have run somewhat smaller than today's large, so five large eggs will give a firmer, more custardy slice.
- Folding the whitesThe beaten whites make this a soufflé-like filling that rises and then settles. Fold them in at the last moment and get the pie into the oven immediately.
- YieldEnough filling for one deep 9-inch pie, six to eight servings, possibly with a little left over. Serve at room temperature or cold; hot from the oven it slices badly.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping (first published in Ohio in the late 1870s) collected contributions by name and town. Fresh pineapple was a luxury in the Midwest, arriving by boat and rail from the Caribbean and, later, Florida, and a Florida housewife could grate a whole one into a pie more readily than an Ohio cook. Grating suited a fruit whose fibrous core and tough eyes resisted the knife, and it produced the juicy pulp these custard-style pies depend on. Within a generation canned Hawaiian pineapple, cheap and shelf-stable, made the fruit an ordinary pantry item.