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Pine-Apple Cream
Ingredients.
The half of a Pine-apple.
Half a pint of Double Cream.
Three-quarters of an ounce of French Gelatine.
Three ounces of Castor Sugar.
Take the pine-apple and trim it well, cut it in half, cut one half into dice, the other half pound in a mortar and pass through a hair-sieve.
Whip the cream, and add the purée of pineapple, also the dice of pine. Dissolve the gelatine in a gill of the pine-apple syrup, add the sugar, and, when nearly cold, strain it into the cream, pour it into a decorated mould, and set it in ice.
A moulded gelatine cream of the kind meant to be turned out whole at table. The gelatine quantity is high by modern standards because the thing has to stand up on a dish.
- Fresh pineapple will stop it settingRaw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and leaves a soupy mess. The reference to "pine-apple syrup" suggests tinned or preserved fruit, which is heat-treated and safe; if using fresh, the purée and dice must be simmered a few minutes first and cooled.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is 10 fl oz British (about 1¼ cups); a gill is a quarter-pint, 5 fl oz. American cooks working from a US pint and gill will be about a sixth short.
- French gelatineThree-quarters of an ounce is about 21 g — roughly three sachets of modern powdered gelatine, or somewhere around ten to twelve of the lighter leaves, fewer of the heavier grades. That is a firm, sliceable set intended for unmoulding, not a spoonable cream.
- Castor sugarSuperfine sugar. Ordinary granulated will work since it dissolves in the warm syrup.
- Hair sieve, mortarA food processor and a fine nylon or stainless sieve replace both. Avoid pressing fibrous core through; trim it out first.
- Tempering the gelatine"When nearly cold" matters. Hot gelatine liquid will melt whipped cream and knock the air out; too cold and it sets in ropes as it hits the cream. Aim for barely warm, and fold quickly.
- Setting"Set it in ice" means packing the mould in ice. Four hours in the refrigerator does the same. To unmould, dip briefly in warm water and invert.
- YieldAbout 1½ pints of mixture — six small moulds or one 1½-pint mould, serving six.
Pineapple in a late-Victorian English kitchen carried a particular weight. Grown in heated pineries on great estates from the eighteenth century onward at ruinous expense, it had by the 1880s and 1890s begun to be canned, shipped from Singapore and later Hawaii, though the "pine-apple syrup" this recipe calls for without further comment could equally be a kitchen or preserved-fruit syrup. Cold moulded creams of this sort — cream, gelatine and fruit purée, turned out and decorated — belonged to the French-derived repertoire that English cookery schools of the period taught to professional and upper-servant cooks. The decorated mould was the point: the dish was judged on how cleanly it came out and how it looked on the buffet, which explains a gelatine quantity that would seem heavy-handed for anything eaten with a spoon.