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Pineapple Cake
Beat together one and one-half cups sugar, and one-half cup butter. When creamy add one cup of sweet milk and two and a half cups of flour through which has been sifted one teaspoon of baking powder and a saltspoon of salt. Flavour with a few drops of almond and vanilla. Lastly beat in lightly the whites of four well-whipped eggs and bake in one loaf. Do not ice till cake is cold. For icing the top and sides soak one-third box gelatine in a little water, then beat till quite dissolved. In a separate bowl whip well the whites of two eggs, adding to them when stiff, one-half cup sugar, the dissolved gelatine, and two cups grated pineapple. Stand in a cold place for half a day before serving.
Or a more simple batter may be made and baked in layers, the filling to be made of one pint whipped cream and one cup grated pineapple sweetened to taste.
A white butter cake with an unusual gelatine-and-pineapple meringue coating. Most of the work is in the icing, and one property of fresh pineapple decides whether it sets at all.
- Fresh pineapple will not set with gelatineRaw pineapple contains bromelain, an enzyme that digests the protein in gelatine, so a frosting made with freshly grated fruit stays soupy. Use canned pineapple, or heat the grated fresh fruit to a simmer for a few minutes and cool it before combining. This is the hinge of the whole recipe.
- Raw egg whites in the icingNeither the meringue icing nor the cream filling is cooked, and the finished cake then stands for half a day. Use pasteurised egg whites, and keep the cake refrigerated rather than in a merely "cold place".
- One-third box of gelatineA standard box held one ounce, so a third is roughly 9 g, or a little over one envelope of modern powdered gelatine. Boxes varied, so treat this as approximate.
- "Beat till quite dissolved"Cold beating will not dissolve gelatine. Soften it in a few tablespoons of cold water, then warm it gently until clear and pour it into the egg whites while it is still fluid but not hot.
- Oven and panThe recipe gives no oven direction. A modern equivalent would be a moderate oven, around 350F, in a loaf tin of roughly 9x5 inches; expect somewhere near 50 to 60 minutes, testing with a skewer. Cool completely before icing, as the recipe does insist.
- Old measuresA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. "Sweet milk" simply means fresh whole milk, as distinct from the buttermilk or sour milk used with soda.
- Folding the whitesFour whites beaten stiff and folded in at the end supply much of the lift, alongside the teaspoon of baking powder and the air worked into the creamed butter and sugar. Fold rather than beat, whatever the wording, or the cake will be dense.
- YieldOne loaf, about 10 to 12 slices. The layer variation at the end gives no tin size; two 8 inch rounds would suit, and a cream-filled cake is best filled and served the same day, since the cream will weep.
White cakes iced with fruit and beaten egg white belong to the turn-of-the-century American dessert table, when packaged granulated gelatine and reliable baking powder had both become ordinary grocery items and cooks could build cold, foamy confections at home without a confectioner's skill. Pineapple's place in books like this one owes much to canning: fresh fruit reached inland households rarely and expensively, while tinned pineapple from Hawaii and the Caribbean became widely available in the first decades of the twentieth century and turns up constantly in cakes, salads and gelatine moulds of the period. That fresh pineapple would keep a jelly from setting was noted in some cookery writing of the era, though how widely it was understood is unclear -- and this recipe itself calls simply for grated pineapple. Almond and vanilla together is a pairing that recurs often in plain white cake recipes of the period.