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Pineapple Sponge
Grate one small pine (or use one-half pint can of preserved fruit), add two-thirds cup of sugar and one-half cup of 243 water; place on stove and let simmer. Meantime have ready one-half package of gelatine which should have been dissolving for half an hour in one cup of water. When the pine has simmered for ten minutes add the gelatine; strain into a mould and let cool for half an hour. Now add the stiff-beaten whites of three eggs and a little lemon juice; place mould in outer dish of ice-water and beat the mixture until it thickens somewhat, when set on ice to harden.
It should be remembered that when gelatine is used with pineapple the resulting concoction must be chilled as soon as possible and used not later than two hours after making on account of the chemical action of the peculiar elements of this fruit on the gelatine.
A variation of the above is found in the recipe below.
This is a cold gelatine sponge in which stiffly beaten raw egg whites are folded into a mixture that has already cooled, then set on ice and eaten. Nothing in the finished dish is ever brought to a temperature that would make the eggs safe, which is why it should be read rather than cooked.
- The raw whites are the problemThree egg whites go in after the pineapple syrup and gelatine have stood half an hour and are being chilled over ice-water. They are never heated, and the whole point of a sponge is to keep them aerated and cold. Uncooked egg white can carry Salmonella, and the sugar-rich, room-temperature beating stage is the opposite of a control step. If you want a pineapple sponge, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg white or a cooked meringue base.
- Why the two-hour rule is in the textFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that cuts the protein chains in gelatine and prevents a set. The author's instruction to chill at once and serve within two hours is a workaround from an era that observed the effect without naming the enzyme. Ten minutes at a simmer will in fact deactivate bromelain; canned pineapple, being heat-processed, poses no threat to a set at all.
- "One-half package of gelatine"A period package of gelatine was not a standardised measure and varied by maker, so a fraction of one is not a reliable guide today. Modern envelopes hold about 1/4 oz (roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons), enough to set two cups of liquid. The original quantity here is genuinely ambiguous.
- "One small pine"A pine is a whole pineapple. The stated alternative, a half-pint can of preserved fruit, is about one cup including its syrup, which is likely less fruit than a grated small pineapple would give; since preserved fruit is already sweetened, the recipe's two-thirds cup of sugar may be more than the canned version needs.
- The stray numberThe printed page was checked: the numeral in that line is the page number 243, caught in the middle of the sentence. The quantity is half a cup of water.
- VesselsThe mould doubles as the mixing bowl here, set inside an "outer dish of ice-water" — a homemade ice bath, before mechanical refrigeration made a chilled bowl trivial. "Set on ice to harden" means exactly that: packed against ice, which is warmer and slower than a modern refrigerator.
Sponges, snows and whips of this kind were showpieces of the American gelatine boom that followed the arrival of cheap, reliable powdered gelatine in the late nineteenth century; before that a cook wanting a clear jelly boiled calves' feet or isinglass for hours. Canned pineapple, sold in small tins, had by around the turn of the century made a former hothouse luxury more widely available, which is presumably why this recipe offers the can as an alternative to a whole fresh fruit. The warning about "the chemical action of the peculiar elements of this fruit" is the most interesting line on the page — a practical, non-technical account of what we now call bromelain digesting gelatine.