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Pineapple Water Ice
Take one or two pineapples which are perfectly sound and fully ripe, pare them, and pick out the specks. Grate the flesh on a coarse grater, and press the pulp through a colander. To a pint of pulp add half a pint of water and eight ounces of sugar, with the white of a fresh egg beaten to a firm froth. Put in the egg in small quantities at a time, and beat the mixture for some minutes. Freeze in the usual way. Or, take half a pound of the flesh of a ripe pineapple. Pound in a mortar, then mix with it the strained juice of a fresh lemon, a pint of syrup, and half a pint of water. Strain through a napkin, and freeze in the usual way. Probable cost, pineapples, 1s. 6d. to 2s. each.
Two versions of the same ice: one enriched with beaten egg white, one built on sugar syrup and lemon. Both were meant for a pail-and-salt freezer, and both need a little translation of measures before they will work in a modern machine.
- Imperial pintsCassell's pint is the British 20 fl oz, so "a pint of pulp" is 2.5 US cups and the half-pint of water is 1.25 cups. Using US pints throughout keeps the ratios intact, if slightly smaller in volume.
- "A pint of syrup"The second method assumes a stock sugar syrup of the kind Victorian cookery books commonly kept on hand: sugar and water boiled together and cooled, in proportions that varied from book to book. A pint of such syrup carries a good deal of sugar -- on the order of three-quarters of a pound at equal weights -- which is presumably why no separate sugar is listed.
- Picking out the specksThe "specks" are the fibrous eyes left in the flesh after paring. They do not break down and will read as splinters in a smooth ice, so cut them out with the point of a knife before grating.
- Bromelain and the egg whiteFresh pineapple contains bromelain, which breaks down protein and can slacken a raw egg-white foam if the mixture is left to stand. Add the froth in small amounts as directed and get the mixture into the freezer promptly.
- Raw egg whiteThe white is never cooked in this ice. Use pasteurised egg white, or make the second version, which contains no egg at all.
- "Freeze in the usual way"For a book of this period that meant a metal can turned by hand in a wooden pail of ice and coarse salt, scraped down as it set. An ice-cream machine does the same job; without one, freeze in a shallow tray and beat hard every 30 minutes until firm, or the ice will set as a solid block.
- Sugar is structuralEight ounces of sugar to a pint and a half of liquid is not merely for sweetness. It keeps the ice scoopable. Cutting it back sharply will give you a rock.
- YieldNeither version states one. The first should make somewhere around a quart of finished ice, enough for six to eight small servings; water ices of this kind were commonly served in small portions, between courses or after the sweet, rather than in a full dessert bowl.
Water ices — fruit purée or juice, sugar and water, with no cream or custard — were the older and plainer branch of frozen desserts, and by the late nineteenth century they were a familiar part of the repertoire in households with reliable access to ice. The price note is the interesting part: at 1s. 6d. to 2s. apiece, a pineapple was a serious purchase, which suggests a dish for a dinner party rather than a family pudding. Pineapples had been grown under glass in British hothouses since the eighteenth century as a display of wealth, and only in the decades before this book appeared did steamship cargoes from the West Indies and the Azores bring the fruit within reach of the middle-class table at all. The egg white in the first method is doing the work later cooks give to Italian meringue or commercial stabilisers: adding body and air to a mixture that has no fat in it.