Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pineapple Sauces for Puddings
Pineapple Sauces for Puddings
Pare a pineapple, and carefully remove the specks. Cut it into slices, and then into dice, and place these in a saucepan. With twelve ounces of fruit put four table-spoonfuls of water, let the fruit simmer gently, and when it is quite tender mix with it half a pound of powdered and sifted sugar. Let it boil a few minutes, and pour it over the pudding. Or, pare the fruit as above directed, weigh it, and cut it into dice. Put a quarter of a pound into a saucepan with its juice, and a dessert-spoonful of water, and let it simmer very gently until tender; then add four ounces of powdered and sifted sugar, and boil gently until the sauce looks bright and clear. Before sending to table stir into it a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice. A superior sauce, and one which will keep for some time, may be made as follows. Put a pound of the minced flesh of a pineapple into a saucepan with three-quarters of a pint of cold water. Let it simmer gently until tender; strain the juice, and mix with it a pound of refined loaf sugar broken small. Let it heat until the sugar is dissolved, then boil it over a moderate fire. If it is not wanted immediately, pour it into a jar, and cover like jam. Time to boil the juice with the sugar, a quarter of an hour. Probable cost pineapples, when cheap, 1s. 6d. to 2s. each.
Three sauces of increasing richness, all built on the same principle: stew the fruit soft, then sweeten heavily and boil until clear. The measurements are workable once a few Victorian terms are translated.
- "Powdered and sifted sugar"This means ordinary refined sugar crushed fine and passed through a sieve, not the modern confectioners' or icing sugar, which contains cornstarch and would cloud the sauce. Use caster or granulated sugar.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone that the cook chipped apart with sugar nippers; "broken small" simply means the lumps were reduced so they would dissolve. Granulated sugar is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- The specksThese are the eyes left behind after paring. Cut them out in the usual diagonal channels, since they stay tough and fibrous no matter how long the fruit simmers.
- Spoon and volume equivalentsA dessert-spoonful is about two teaspoons. The three-quarter pint in the third sauce is imperial, so roughly 15 fl oz, or a scant two US cups.
- "A moderate fire"For a sugar syrup this means a steady, uncovered boil that does not climb the pan, somewhere around medium heat on a modern hob. The quarter-hour given is a guide; stop when the syrup is clear and just coats a spoon, as boiling much longer will thicken it past sauce consistency.
- Sugar ratioThe second sauce carries four ounces of sugar to four ounces of fruit, which is very sweet by current taste and was calculated for plain steamed and boiled puddings. Cutting it by a third still gives a bright, clear sauce, and the lemon juice at the end is what keeps it from cloying.
- Keeping the third sauce"Cover like jam" meant a paper or waxed disc and a tied cover on a warm jar. It is a fruit syrup rather than a set preserve, so treat it as a fresh sauce: refrigerate it and use within two or three weeks.
- Fresh fruit onlyCanned pineapple is already cooked and packed in syrup, so it collapses to threads and throws the sugar balance out. If fresh is the only option available, choose a fruit heavy for its size with a sweet smell at the base.
- YieldTwelve ounces of fruit with half a pound of sugar makes something in the region of a pint of chunky sauce, enough for six to eight servings of pudding. The second version, on a quarter-pound of fruit, will stretch to two or three.
Pineapples reached British tables first as a luxury grown at home: from the eighteenth century large estates kept heated "pineries", and a single fruit was a display piece often said to be worth more than the dinner it crowned. What changed by the time Cassell's was compiled was shipping. Faster steamers from the West Indies and the Azores, and later canning, brought the fruit within reach of the middle-class household the dictionary was written for, and the entry's note of "1s. 6d. to 2s. each, when cheap" catches that shift mid-stride: still a considered purchase, no longer an impossible one. The sauces themselves belong to the great Victorian apparatus of boiled and steamed puddings, where a plain suet or batter base was distinguished chiefly by what was poured over it, and a clear, bright fruit syrup was the mark of a cook with something better than custard to hand.