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Marshmallows and Pineapple
To half a pound of marshmallows cut fine, add a can of shredded pineapple. If there is much juice in the pineapple strain some of it out. Chill for two hours. Just before serving whip stiff one cupful of cream, add to the fruit and marshmallows and serve in sherbet glasses with chocolate wafers.
A no-cook icebox dessert that depends almost entirely on drainage: too much pineapple juice and the whipped cream slackens into soup within minutes.
- Drain the pineapple properly"Strain some of it out" undersells it. Tip the can into a sieve and let it sit several minutes, pressing lightly; reserve a spoonful or two of juice to moisten the marshmallows and discard the rest.
- Shredded pineappleThe old canned shredded pineapple is probably closest to today's crushed pineapple. The recipe says only "a can"; a can of around 20 oz is roughly the right scale for this quantity.
- Half a pound of marshmallowsRoughly 30 large marshmallows, or about 4 cups of miniatures. Miniatures need no cutting; if cutting large ones, use scissors dipped in cold water or lightly oiled.
- What the two hours are forThe chill is not just cooling; the marshmallows will absorb residual juice and soften. Undertimed, they stay chewier against the cream.
- Whip the cream short of "stiff"The cream -- use heavy or whipping cream; 1 cup gives about 2 cups whipped.
- Assemble at the last minuteThe instruction "just before serving" is load-bearing; if held, the mixture is liable to weep.
- Chocolate wafersThin, crisp, unsweetened-tasting chocolate cookies of the kind sold for icebox cakes. Any plain crisp chocolate biscuit works; a soft cookie will not give the needed snap.
- YieldFour to six sherbet glasses, depending on how generously you fill them.
This belongs to the great age of the canned-pineapple dessert, when Hawaiian pineapple in tins and commercially produced marshmallows both became cheap staples of the American pantry and cooks combined them in every possible arrangement of fruit, cream and nuts. Marshmallows, originally a confection thickened with the root of the marsh mallow plant and later with gelatin, were also put to work as an ingredient: folded into whipped cream, they melt slightly and act as sweetener, thickener and body all at once, which is why so many recipes of the era read like this one. Nothing here requires heat, and the only work is draining, chilling and whipping, so the cook stays out of the kitchen. Its relatives -- five-cup salad, the various pineapple-and-marshmallow "salads" served with dinner rather than after it -- kept the formula in circulation for decades.