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Raspberry Cream in Pineapple Shells
Cut off the top of a large pineapple, then with a strong spoon scoop out the pulp, separating it from the hard core, which should be rejected. Sugar the fruit, let it stand some time, then pour off from it a cup of juice. Trim the pineapple shell at the bottom so it will stand firm and chill in the refrigerator. Mash well a pint of red raspberries, add a fourth of a cup of water, half a cup of sugar and the pineapple juice, and cook the mixture several minutes. Take from the stove, add the juice of a lemon, more sugar if needed, and strain through a cheesecloth. Beat a quart of cream and a cup of sugar until light and frothy, flavor with vanilla and freeze as ice cream; when half frozen add the fruit juice and finish freezing. Fill into the pineapple shell, set it in a deep mold or the freezer can and let it stand packed in ice and salt for an hour or longer.
To serve, lift it from the mold on to a plate covered with a pretty doily, as shown in the illustration.-See Page XXI.
A hand-crank ice cream of the 1900s, dressed up in a hollowed pineapple. The mechanics translate directly to a modern machine, with two adjustments: the volume and the hardening step.
- Volume mismatchA quart of cream with a cup of sugar, plus the strained fruit mixture (which comes to a good pint or more), churns up to something in the region of two quarts of finished ice cream, while a large pineapple shell holds perhaps a pint and a half. Pack the shell and store the rest in a covered container.
- "Freeze as ice cream"This means the ice-and-salt bucket churn. Use an ice cream machine and add the strained fruit juice partway through churning, once the mixture has thickened but is still soft, exactly as written.
- Beating the cream"Light and frothy" is not whipped to peaks. Whisk only until the sugar dissolves and the cream is foamy and slightly thickened; fully whipped cream churns badly and freezes greasy.
- Cream to useHeavy or whipping cream, around 36% fat. Cream skimmed by hand in this period could run richer still, so the original may well have frozen denser than a modern quart of cream would.
- Straining mattersPush the cooked raspberry mixture through cheesecloth or a fine sieve and discard the seeds. Raspberry seeds are unpleasant frozen, and they will not soften in the churn.
- Packing in ice and saltThe final hour is a hardening step, not more freezing. Wrap the filled shell and put it in the coldest part of the freezer for an hour or two instead; it will firm up enough to unmold and slice.
- Chill the shell firstThe instruction to refrigerate the trimmed shell is worth following. A room-temperature pineapple will melt the surface of the ice cream as you pack it in.
- YieldEight to ten servings from the full quantity; four to six from the shell alone.
Serving frozen creams inside the fruit that flavored them was a standard flourish of turn-of-the-century American dessert cookery, and pineapple shells, melon halves and hollowed orange skins all appear in the period's illustrated cookbooks. Pineapples had become more widely available in northern cities by this date, carried north by fast steamship and rail from Caribbean and Florida growers, though whole fruit was still enough of an occasion to justify a party dish. The recipe's economy is characteristic of its source: the pineapple pulp is sugared and drained so its juice flavors the ice, the shell becomes the serving vessel, and nothing is wasted but the woody core. The reference to an illustration on a plate numbered in roman numerals is a reminder that these frozen desserts were shown as centerpieces, meant to be copied down to the doily.