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Pineapple, Preserved
Pineapples are so expensive that it is very unusual to preserve them in any quantity. Nevertheless, as the jam made from them is very delicious and highly esteemed, the following recipes are given. The foreign fruit and that which is grown at home are often mixed with advantage. It need scarcely be said that that which is grown at home is much superior to that sent from abroad. Great care must be taken in choosing the fruit to secure it perfectly sound and fully ripe, without being in the least decayed. If the flesh round the stalk looks mouldy or dark, the fruit should not be preserved. The flavour of pineapples may generally be guessed at by their odour. Pare the pineapples, and take out the eyes. Cut them into slices of a third of an inch thick. For every pound of fruit thus weighed after being pared, take a pound of loaf sugar, and a small teacupful of water. Dissolve the sugar in the water, skim carefully, and boil until it forms a clear syrup. Put in the slices of pine, and boil gently until they look bright and clear. Put the preserve into jars, cover closely, and store in a cool, dry place. Time to boil, at least half an hour after the fruit reaches the boiling point. Probable cost, when pineapples are cheap, 1s. 3d. per pound.
A straightforward equal-weight fruit-and-sugar preserve, closer to candied pineapple in syrup than to a set jam. The Victorian instructions assume loaf sugar, a hothouse-grown fruit and a cool larder; a few adjustments bring it into a modern kitchen.
- The hinge: cook to a syrup stage, not to a clock"At least half an hour" was a rough guide. Judge by the syrup instead / slices that have turned translucent right through, as the book says, "bright and clear".
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold in solid cones to be broken up and was prized for boiling clear. Ordinary granulated white sugar is the direct equivalent; there is no need for preserving or jam sugar, since this preserve is not meant to set.
- A small teacupful of waterA Victorian teacup is smaller than a modern mug / read this as about 4 fl oz (120 ml) per pound of fruit. It is only there to dissolve the sugar, and pineapple releases plenty of juice of its own.
- Weigh after paringThe pound-for-pound ratio applies to trimmed flesh, not whole fruit. A pineapple loses roughly half its weight to skin, eyes and core, so a 3 lb fruit yields around 1 1/2 lb of usable slices.
- Eyes and coreCutting spiral trenches to remove the eyes is still the neatest method. The book says nothing about the core, which in modern commercial varieties is edible but stays fibrous / stamp it out of each slice unless you want chewy centres.
- It will not setPineapple is low in pectin, so expect bright slices suspended in a heavy syrup. Treating it as a topping for cream, rice pudding or a plain cake is more rewarding than spreading it on toast.
- Sealing and storage"Cover closely and store in a cool, dry place" reflects a period when jars were sealed with paper, wax or a bladder. Use hot sterilised jars with proper lids and either process them in a boiling water bath or keep the filled jars in the refrigerator and eat within a month.
- Yield and costA pound of prepared fruit and a pound of sugar fills roughly three to four 8 oz jars. The 1s 3d per pound is a note on hothouse economics rather than anything useful today.
Pineapples reached British tables long before they reached British budgets: grown from the eighteenth century in heated "pineries" on great estates / Chatsworth and Dunmore are the famous examples / and, if a much-repeated story is to be believed, rented out as centrepieces before they were ever eaten. That is the world the opening sentence comes from, and it explains the confident claim that home-grown fruit is superior to imported; a pinery pine was cut ripe a few yards from the house, while fruit from the West Indies or the Azores travelled green in the hold of a ship. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s and after, steam shipping had begun to bring the price down, but pineapple was still enough of a luxury that a whole preserving recipe had to be prefaced with an apology for the expense. The method itself / equal weights of fruit and sugar, boiled until the slices go clear / is the standard nineteenth-century treatment for any firm fruit that would not make jelly, and the same instructions turn up for quince, ginger and citron peel.