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Pineapple Jelly
Pare a ripe pineapple, and cut it into slices. Lay these on a dish, cover them with powdered and sifted sugar, and leave them for six or seven hours. Pour off the syrup and strain it. Dissolve and clarify an ounce of isinglass (see ISINGLASS, TO CLARIFY) in half a pint of water. Mix with it a pint of the strained juice, and simmer all gently together for five minutes. Add a glassful of Curacoa. Pour three table-spoonfuls of the jelly into a mould shaped like a pineapple, if one be at hand. Let the jelly stiffen, then lay neatly on it two or three slices of the pineapple, and a little more jelly. Let this also stiffen, and repeat until the mould is full. Turn the jelly out very carefully when it is wanted for use. If preferred, this jelly can be put into the mould without the fruit, but will not then be so elegant. When time is a consideration, the flavour of the pineapple may be drawn out more quickly by cutting the fruit into slices, and boiling half a pound of it with eight ounces of loaf sugar, and half a pint of water for half an hour, then straining it through a napkin. Time, two days. If the mould cannot be put upon ice, the jelly should be made some hours before it is wanted. Probable cost, 3s., exclusive of the Curacoa, if made with a pineapple costing 1s. 6d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A Victorian moulded jelly built in layers, and the one place it can fail is chemistry rather than technique. Everything below assumes you want it to turn out of the mould standing up.
- Fresh pineapple and gelatineRaw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and will leave you with sweet soup. The recipe's five-minute simmer of the juice destroys the enzyme, so do not skip it or shortcut by stirring cold macerating syrup into dissolved gelatine. The slices laid into the mould are still raw and will soften the jelly touching them: poach them briefly in a little of the syrup first, or use drained canned pineapple, which is heat-treated.
- IsinglassIsinglass is clarified collagen from fish swim bladders, once the standard setting agent and now sold mainly for fining beer and wine. Use powdered gelatine instead. For a jelly firm enough to unmould, roughly 20-25 g (three to four 7 g envelopes) will set the total liquid here.
- MeasuresPints are imperial: half a pint is 10 fl oz (285 ml), a pint is 20 fl oz (570 ml). A "glassful" of Curaçao means a wineglass of the period, about 2 fl oz (60 ml). Alcohol weakens a set, so count it toward your liquid when weighing gelatine.
- Loaf sugarLoaf or lump sugar was refined cane sold in cones or cut cubes; ordinary granulated is a direct swap. "Powdered and sifted" sugar means sugar crushed fine, closer to caster than to modern icing sugar, which contains cornflour.
- The quick methodThe alternative given at the end - boiling 8 oz pineapple with 8 oz sugar and half a pint of water for thirty minutes - produces a cooked, jammy flavour rather than the fresh one, but it is enzyme-safe and reduces the "two days" to an afternoon.
- LayeringEach layer must be set but still tacky before the next goes on, and the jelly you pour must be barely warm, or it melts what is underneath. Three tablespoons at a time is right; in the refrigerator each layer takes 20-30 minutes.
- Turning outDip the mould in hot water for a few seconds, or wring a cloth in hot water and hold it against the outside, then invert onto a wetted plate so the jelly can be slid into position. Chill at least six hours, or overnight for a tall mould - the note about ice is the period equivalent.
- YieldSix to eight small servings, as the original states, which suits about a 1.2 litre (2 pint) mould.
Pineapple in a Victorian English kitchen was a statement of means: hothouse pineries kept by large estates supplied the home market from the eighteenth century onward, and the fruit was costly enough that it is often said to have been hired out as a table ornament rather than eaten. Cassell's quotes a pineapple at 1s. 6d., cheap by earlier standards thanks to steamship cargoes from the West Indies and the Azores, but still a luxury; the book's suggestion of a mould shaped like the fruit itself, 'if one be at hand', fits a dish meant to be looked at. The setting agent, isinglass, came largely from Russian sturgeon and was among the finest and dearest of the gelatines, prized because it clarified to near-invisibility; commercial powdered gelatine displaced it in domestic cookery over the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Curacao, the orange-peel liqueur generally traced to Dutch trade with the Caribbean island of that name, was a common flavouring in genteel English sweets of the period, and the recipe's pricing 'exclusive of the Curacoa' suggests the bottle was assumed to be already in the house.