Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pineapple Sponge
Pineapple Sponge
Put half a pint of grated pineapple into a saucepan, with half an ounce of sheet gelatine previously dissolved in a table-spoonful of lemon juice and a little water, and two ounces of sugar, and stir until well mixed and the sugar melted. Add a table-spoonful of sherry, and leave the mixture to cool a little. Whip the white of an egg to a froth, add it to the mixture, and whisk the whole to a firm consistency. It should then be put into a mould and turned out when set. Garnish the dish with a little whipped cream, sweetened, and flavoured with pineapple essence. Probable cost, 2s.
A Victorian gelatine "sponge" — a fruit jelly lightened with raw egg white and whisked until it holds air. Two things about it do not survive contact with a modern kitchen: the uncooked egg and the chemistry of fresh pineapple.
- The raw egg whiteThe whipped white is folded into a mixture that has only been warmed enough to melt sugar, then chilled and served. Nothing in the method brings the egg to a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the finished sponge sits at room temperature while it sets and is garnished. If you want a pineapple mousse of this type, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg white or on cream alone.
- Fresh pineapple dissolves gelatineFresh pineapple and gelatine -- Raw pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that cuts gelatine's protein chains and can leave the mixture soupy. It is deactivated by heat, and this recipe only says to stir until the sugar melts and then cool, which may not get the fruit hot enough. The recipe does not say whether the grated pineapple is fresh or tinned; tinned fruit has already been heat-treated and will set, but a sponge made with unheated fresh pineapple may fail to set at all.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups of grated fruit. This is a British book, so the measures are imperial rather than the American 16 oz pint.
- Sheet gelatineHalf an ounce is about 14 g, which is a great deal — modern leaf gelatine runs roughly 1.7 g a sheet at platinum grade, so eight sheets or so. Victorian sheet gelatine was probably less consistent and less strong than what is sold now, which may account for the high quantity.
- Pineapple essenceThe flavouring for the cream was usually a manufactured essence sold by grocers and chemists, commonly built on synthetic esters. It has largely vanished from ordinary shops; the flavour was sharper and more confected than fresh fruit.
- "Probable cost, 2s."Two shillings was a serious sum for a pudding by the standards of the period — imported pineapple, sherry and a half-ounce of gelatine were all expensive. Cassell's routinely gave a probable cost for each dish.
Whisked gelatine desserts of this kind — called sponges, snows or creams depending on the house — were popular on late-Victorian tables, helped by the spread of commercial sheet and powdered gelatine, which increasingly spared cooks the long job of boiling calves' feet for stock jelly, though recipes for the older method carried on alongside it. Imported and tinned pineapple became far more widely available in Britain over the same period, so a fruit that had been a hothouse trophy for the gentry became something a middle-class cook could set in a mould. The method is the point rather than the fruit: warm a fruit purée with dissolved gelatine, lighten it with beaten white, mould, turn out, garnish with sweetened cream. That the bromelain in raw pineapple will quietly undo the gelatine was not understood at the time — the enzyme was not named until the 1890s and its effect on jellies became common kitchen knowledge much later, which may explain why so many household books repeat the instruction without warning.