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Pineapple Pudding, Cold, or Pain D'Ananas
Cut a ripe pineapple into slices, and boil these for ten minutes in a pint of syrup. Lift out the fruit, and press it through a sieve. Soak an ounce of gelatine in half a pint of cold water for twenty minutes, drain it, put it into the syrup in which the pineapple was boiled, and stir it over the fire until it is dissolved. Strain through a napkin, and when the syrup is cold mix the pineapple pulp with it. Decorate a plain mould with an ounce of pistachios cut into strips, a large pear cut into dice, and some preserved cherries. The fruit may be stuck upon the mould with a little melted gelatine. Pour in the mixture, and place the pudding upon ice until it is wanted. Turn it out before serving. Time to prepare, about an hour. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A moulded fruit jelly of the kind Victorian kitchens turned out onto a cold dish and sent to table whole. Most of it translates directly; the pineapple itself is the part that needs attention.
- Boil the pineapple, alwaysFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that digests gelatine and will leave the pudding a soupy mess. The ten minutes of boiling here is not for softness but to destroy the enzyme, so do not shorten it and do not fold in any raw pineapple at the end. Tinned pineapple is already heat-treated and is safe with gelatine.
- The syrupA pint of syrup means a stock sugar syrup. The recipe gives no proportions; something in the region of 1 lb sugar to 1 pint water would suit here. Imperial pints are 20 fl oz, so allow roughly 2 1/2 US cups.
- Gelatine quantityOne ounce is 28 g, about four 7 g envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, setting roughly 1 1/2 pints of liquid once the pulp goes in. That is a firm set, deliberately so: the pudding has to stand up once turned out. Leaf gelatine can be substituted by weight, though modern sheets vary in strength by grade.
- Soaking and dissolvingTwenty minutes in cold water then draining is the correct treatment for sheet gelatine or the old sheet-cut kind. With powder, sprinkle it over a few tablespoons of cold water, let it bloom five minutes, and stir it into the warm syrup off the boil — gelatine loses strength if held at a rolling boil.
- Straining through a napkinA double layer of muslin or a fine-mesh sieve lined with a coffee filter does the same job. It catches gelatine scum and fibre, which matters if you want the jelly clear enough to show the decoration.
- Sticking the decorationChill the mould first, brush the inside with a thin, nearly set gelatine, and press the pistachios, pear dice and cherries into it. Let that layer firm up completely before pouring in the pineapple mixture, or the pattern lifts and drifts.
- "Upon ice"A refrigerator at 4C does the work of the old ice cave. Allow four to six hours, and overnight is better; a set this large will not be reliably firm in an hour.
- Turning outDip the mould to the rim in hot water for five to ten seconds, no longer, then invert onto a wetted plate so the pudding can be slid into position. Serves six or seven, as stated. The cost of 3s is a period figure and means nothing today.
Pain in French cookery means a moulded preparation turned out in a loaf or dome — a pain de volaille, a pain de foie gras, a pain d'ananas — and by the nineteenth century it had come to cover sweet moulded creams and jellies as much as savoury forcemeats. Pineapple was still a display fruit in Britain when Cassell's was compiled: variously imported or, as is often said of the period, raised in heated pineries on large estates, expensive enough that the 3s. cost given here would have struck readers as a real outlay for a pudding. The recipe belongs to the great age of the mould, when gelatine had shifted from a laborious calf's-foot extraction to a bought commercial product and tinned copper shapes were a familiar part of the ambitious kitchen's equipment. Decorating the inside of the mould with pistachios, pear and preserved cherries, so the pattern appears in reverse when the jelly is turned out, is the standard technique of the period and much of the reason for serving the dish moulded at all.