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Frozen Pineapple
Grate or chop fine one quart of pineapple, adding sugar in proportion of one cup to one quart of fruit, if tart; if sweet, less. Or, the grated pineapple may have syrup added to it instead of the sugar. The white of egg or other fruits make variation, also.
PINEAPPLE JELLY No. I Dissolve one package of gelatine in a pint of cold water, gradually heating it through on the stove. When at boiling point add one cup of sugar and take off to cool. When the gelatine is beginning to harden beat into it the juice of one pineapple and a teaspoonful of lemon juice, and place on ice to harden.
PINEAPPLE JELLY (WITHOUT GELATINE) No. 2 Wash thoroughly one pineapple, cut off stem and crown and slice in thick slices unpeeled, then cut across. With this slice in thinly two lemons, including rind, and simmer, with one pint of water, for several hours. Strain and squeeze through jelly bag, and place again on stove. When at boiling point strain again into another pan, bring to boiling point and add sugar, pint for pint. Cook about ten minutes, when it will jell. Pineapple makes up into everything in the way of marmalade, and preserves, however, a little more satisfactorily than in the pure jelly form (without gelatine), as its juice is inclined to be sticky and rich rather than sharp and firm.
Three related preparations run together in one entry: a fruit ice, a gelatine jelly, and a boiled jelly made without gelatine. The pineapple's own enzyme is the thing that decides whether two of them work.
- Raw pineapple juice will not set gelatineFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that digests gelatine and leaves it permanently liquid. Jelly No. 1 adds raw juice to cooling gelatine, so as written it is likely to fail. Bring the juice to a boil for a minute or two first, or use canned pineapple juice, which has already been heat-treated.
- "One package of gelatine"A period package was about 1 ounce, roughly four modern envelopes, which for one pint of water gives a very firm, sliceable jelly of the sort that was moulded and turned out. For a softer spoonable jelly use one envelope (1/4 oz) per two cups of liquid, and count the pineapple juice as part of that liquid.
- Freezing the pineappleThe text itself gives no freezing method; only the title tells us the sweetened fruit was frozen, presumably in a hand-cranked freezer. In a modern freezer, spread the sweetened grated fruit in a shallow metal pan and stir it up with a fork every 30 to 40 minutes until it is firm, about 3 to 4 hours, or freeze it in an ice cream machine. Left undisturbed it sets into a solid brick.
- QuantitiesOne quart of grated pineapple is the flesh of one large or two small fruits, about 2 lb trimmed. The one cup of sugar per quart is a fair starting point; modern pineapples are usually sweet enough to take less.
- The syrup variationThe recipe does not say what syrup or how strong. A plain sugar syrup dissolves more evenly in cold fruit than dry sugar does; allow for the water it carries and expect a softer freeze.
- Raw egg whiteBeaten white was commonly folded into ices for lightness, but freezing does not destroy salmonella. Use pasteurised egg white if you want the variation.
- Jelly No. 2 and pectinLeaving the skin and core on the pineapple and simmering the lemons rind and all is deliberate: the fruit's flesh is low in pectin and most of what there is sits in the peel and the lemon pith. Even so the author admits the result is sticky rather than firm, which is honest. "Sugar, pint for pint" means equal volumes of strained juice and sugar.
- StorageNo sterilising or sealing is described, so treat both jellies as fresh preparations. Keep them covered in the refrigerator and use within a week; do not set them aside in a cupboard as shelf-stable preserves.
Pineapple was still something of a luxury when this was written, but no longer a rarity: steam shipping from the Caribbean had brought fresh fruit within reach of northern cities, and canned pineapple, much of it from the new Hawaiian plantations, was arriving alongside it. That change shows in the entry's confidence that a cook will have a whole fruit to spare for a water ice. The two jellies mark a moment of transition in the American kitchen: packaged powdered gelatine, sold in a one-ounce box and needing no calf's foot or long boiling, had recently made moulded jellies easy, while the older method of extracting a set by long simmering with lemon and rind still stood beside it. The author's closing remark that pineapple does better as marmalade or preserve than as a clear jelly is a plain-spoken acknowledgement of a chemical fact for which there was then no name: the fruit is low in pectin. Separately, its protein-digesting enzyme, generally traced to chemists working in the 1890s and named bromelin, is the reason a fresh-pineapple gelatine dessert so often refuses to set.