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Pineapple Chips
The pines should be sliced thin and pared, placed on dishes, and covered thickly with powdered sugar. For ten days these dishes must be kept in a slow oven or other heated place, and the slices turned each day. At the expiration of this time place the slices in a quick oven for just ten minutes, then remove, cool, and place between layers of paper with powdered sugar sifted over the fruit.
This is a candying-and-drying method, not a baking recipe: the sugar draws out juice over days in gentle heat, and the short blast of high heat at the end sets the surface. The whole thing hinges on the temperature of that "slow oven or other heated place."
- "Slow oven" here is not 300F"Slow oven" here cannot mean the usual baking sense -- A slow oven for baking is generally given as about 300F, but nothing would survive ten days at that temperature. The direction "or other heated place" suggests the residual warmth of a cooling range or a warm closet instead; that implies something far cooler, perhaps in the region of 120-150F. A dehydrator or an oven on its lowest setting with the door propped is the nearest modern equivalent.
- The quick oven at the end"Quick" is usually reckoned at roughly 400-425F. Ten minutes at that heat will glaze the sugar; watch the trays, because sugar-coated fruit darkens very fast.
- "Pines"Pineapples. The recipe asks only for thin slices, pared; how thin is left to the cook, and thicker slices will need longer than the stated ten days.
- Powdered sugarIn this period powdered sugar meant granulated sugar ground fine, with no starch in it. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, which clouds the finish; superfine or caster sugar is closer to what was intended.
- Pour off the syrupSyrup in the dishes -- The recipe says only to turn the slices each day, and does not mention draining the liquid the sugar draws out; some cooks may prefer to pour it off, but that is not what is directed here.
- Judging donenessAfter ten days the slices should be leathery and translucent, tacky but not sticky-wet. If they still weep juice when pressed, they need more time before the hot oven.
- Yield and storageStorage -- Store layered between parchment in a tin, as the recipe directs with paper and sifted sugar; in humid weather they will soften and are best kept cool.
Candied pineapple belongs to the long tradition of preserving fruit by saturating it with sugar rather than drying it alone, a technique European kitchens applied to citrus peel, angelica and ginger well before pineapples were widely available. Through much of the nineteenth century the fruit was a luxury, grown in heated glasshouses called pineries on large estates or shipped at considerable expense from the West Indies, which is why an older recipe treats ten days of oven space as a reasonable investment. "Chips" here simply means thin slices, the same sense in which the word was used for dried apple.