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Pineapple Souffle
Blend very gently three ounces of flour and the same of fresh butter in a stewpan over the fire, and add half a pint of milk. Remove the pan to the side of the fire, and put in two table-spoonfuls of thick cream and the beaten yolks of three eggs; add about three ounces of pineapple (fresh or tinned) chopped very small or grated. Then add a little essence of pineapple and the whipped whites of four eggs. Prepare a mould, put the mixture in, and steam for an hour and a quarter. Turn out and serve with a sauce made from pineapple juice and a little Madeira wine, slightly sweetened.
This is a steamed soufflé pudding rather than the risen, collapse-in-five-minutes kind: a thick flour-and-butter panada bound with yolks, lightened with whites, and cooked slowly in a covered mould. It turns out as a soft, spoonable pudding.
- The hinge: fold, then steam gentlyThe whipped whites are the only lift the pudding gets, so fold them into the warm panada in two additions with a light hand. A fierce, rattling boil under the mould will drive the mixture up and then flatten it; keep the water at a bare simmer, topped up as it evaporates.
- Half a pintIn a British book of this period a pint is 20 fl oz, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. With 3 oz each of flour and butter this gives a very stiff panada, which is what carries the whites.
- StewpanA straight-sided saucepan of moderate depth. Make the roux over low heat without colouring it, then beat the milk in off the boil to keep it smooth.
- Preparing the mouldButter a 1½-quart charlotte mould or pudding basin heavily and dust it with caster sugar; fill no more than three-quarters, and cover tightly with buttered paper or foil pleated across the top so condensation cannot run in.
- Essence of pineappleA Victorian flavouring essence, commonly based on ethyl butyrate, the ester sold at the time as 'pineapple oil', sometimes blended with others. Modern pineapple extract is the near equivalent; a teaspoon is plenty, and it can be left out if the fruit is well flavoured.
- Fresh versus tinned pineappleRaw fresh pineapple contains bromelain, which digests protein and can slacken an egg-bound mixture before the heat inactivates it. Tinned fruit has already been heat-treated; if using fresh, simmer the chopped fruit for a couple of minutes and drain it before adding.
- SweeteningThe pudding itself has no sugar at all — all the sweetness is meant to come from the fruit and the sauce. Two tablespoons of caster sugar beaten into the yolks will not harm it if you want the pudding sweet in its own right.
- Timing and testingAn hour and a quarter suits a full 1½-quart mould; smaller moulds or dariole cups need 35–45 minutes. It is done when the centre is just set and a skewer comes out clean. Let it stand five minutes before turning out or it will slump.
- YieldServes six as a dessert. The sauce is little more than warmed pineapple juice with a splash of Madeira and sugar to taste — thicken it with a teaspoon of arrowroot if you want it to coat.
This is a steamed soufflé pudding of the kind served among the sweet entremets at a late-Victorian dinner, and the steamed treatment suits a household kitchen rather than a restaurant: unlike a baked soufflé, it waits patiently in its mould and travels from kitchen to dining room without collapsing. The recipe's easy "fresh or tinned" is itself a rough date stamp. Commercial pineapple canning had made the fruit widely available in Britain by the closing decades of the nineteenth century, where a century earlier a fresh pineapple was a hothouse luxury grown in heated pits and, by a much-repeated account, sometimes hired out as a table ornament rather than eaten. The bottled "essence of pineapple" alongside it belongs to the same moment: manufactured fruit essences, pineapple among them, were sold to confectioners and cooks from the middle of the century, and Victorian cookery books use them without apology to reinforce a fruit whose flavour weakens with cooking.