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Pineapple Fluff
Soak one tablespoonful of gelatin in a quarter cup of cold water and then dissolve in half a cup of boiling water. Add a cup of sugar. When cool add one cup of canned pineapple, without much juice, half a pint of cream whipped stiff. Mix the cream with the fruit and then with the dissolved gelatin and sugar. Put in a mold. When ready to serve, turn out and decorate the top with maraschino cherries and leaves of angelica.
A gelatin-and-whipped-cream mousse of the sort that filled the cold-dessert slot in interwar menus. It works reliably provided the pineapple is cooked, and provided the gelatin base is at the right temperature when the cream goes in.
- Canned pineapple is not optionalFresh or frozen raw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatin and leaves you with sweet soup. Canning heat destroys the enzyme, so the recipe's "canned pineapple" is doing structural work, not just convenience.
- The temperature hinge"When cool" means tepid and syrupy but still fluid. Too warm and the whipped cream deflates into liquid; too cold and the gelatin sets in strings through the mixture. Stir the base over ice until it just begins to thicken at the edges, then fold quickly.
- Gelatin and liquidOne tablespoon of granulated gelatin is roughly one modern envelope (about 7 g), which is right for the three-quarter cup of water plus a cup of drained fruit and a cup of whipped cream.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup of heavy cream, which whips to about two cups. Whip only to soft-to-medium peaks.
- SugarA full cup is very sweet by current taste, especially with pineapple canned in syrup. Half to two-thirds of a cup gives a dessert that still sets and still tastes of fruit.
- Draining the fruit"Without much juice" matters — press the pineapple in a sieve. Excess syrup thins the gelatin past its setting strength and weeps in the mold.
- Mold and chillingThe mixture comes to roughly a quart, so use a 1-quart mold or six small ones. Chill at least four hours, preferably overnight, before unmolding; dip the mold briefly in warm water and invert onto a wet plate so you can slide the dessert straight.
- Angelica and yieldCandied angelica is still sold, chiefly French; thin strips of candied citron or angelica-green pistachio halves stand in visually. Serves six as written.
Pineapple Fluff belongs to the great age of the gelatin dessert, when powdered gelatin sold in measured envelopes and canned pineapple sold in every grocery made a molded sweet something a household cook could produce without a confectioner's skill. Canned Hawaiian pineapple was cheap and ubiquitous by the 1920s, and its bright acidity was exactly what a cream-heavy mousse needed. Cold molds had the practical advantage that they could be made in the morning and turned out at the table with no last-minute work. The maraschino cherry and angelica garnish is a common finish of the period, a red-and-green flourish repeated often enough to become a visual signature of the era's desserts.