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Pineapple Cream, Made with Tinned Fruit
Cut half a pound of preserved pineapple into dice. Put the syrup into a stewpan with three ounces of loaf sugar and half a pint of water. When the sugar is dissolved, put in the fruit, and boil all quickly for ten minutes. Add three-quarters of an ounce of isinglass, and boil ten minutes longer. Pour the mixture into a bowl, and whisk it well with one pint and a quarter of cream. As soon as it begins to thicken, pour it into a mould, and set it upon ice. Stir it for a few minutes after it is on the ice to prevent the fruit settling to the bottom. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A Victorian moulded cream, set with isinglass rather than gelatine and built around a then-novel ingredient: pineapple from a tin. The measurements are imperial, and one of the timings will cost you the set if you follow it literally.
- Tinned, not freshThis only works because the fruit is canned. Fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and leaves the cream a soupy mess; the heat of canning destroys it. If you substitute fresh or frozen pineapple, the mould will never set.
- IsinglassA collagen setting agent made from fish swim bladders, principally sturgeon, sold in shreds and largely gone from domestic kitchens by the mid-twentieth century. Powdered or leaf gelatine is the modern stand-in, but the exchange is not one-for-one and old isinglass varied in strength, so follow the quantity on the gelatine packet for the total liquid rather than trying to convert three-quarters of an ounce directly.
- Do not boil the setting agentThe instruction to boil ten minutes longer after adding the isinglass reflects the older product, which needed long dissolving. Modern gelatine is degraded by sustained boiling and will set weakly or not at all: dissolve it off the heat in the hot syrup.
- Imperial measuresCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so half a pint of water is 10 fl oz (a scant cup and a quarter) and a pint and a quarter of cream is 25 fl oz, near enough three US cups. Half a pound of pineapple is 8 oz, about 225 g drained.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in hard cones or blocks, broken and crushed before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement, three ounces being about six to seven tablespoons.
- Cool before the cream goes inWhisking cold cream into a just-boiled syrup will thin it and can curdle it. Let the fruit syrup cool to lukewarm, then whisk in the cream so it thickens as the gelatine chills rather than staying liquid.
- StewpanA straight-sided saucepan with a lid. Any medium saucepan does; use a wide one so the syrup reduces evenly during the boil.
- Setting on iceA refrigerator replaces the ice cave. The stirring instruction still matters, since the diced fruit sinks: stir until the mixture is visibly thick, then leave the mould undisturbed for four hours or overnight.
- Timing and yieldThe three-quarters of an hour is working time only, not the set. Seven or eight portions is accurate for a rich cream of this size.
Tinned pineapple is the point of this recipe. Cassell's cookery titles belong to the later nineteenth century, the decades when commercially canned fruit turned pineapple from a hothouse luxury — and, by tradition, a centrepiece that could be hired rather than eaten — into something a middle-class cook could buy off a grocer's shelf, and the book names the tinned origin in the title. The setting agent belongs to the older world: isinglass, prepared from fish swim bladders, was a standard clarifier and jelly-stiffener of the British kitchen and brewery before manufactured gelatine displaced it. What results is a classic of the period's dessert repertoire, a whisked cream turned out of a shaped mould, where the visual effect of the unmoulding mattered as much as the flavour.