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Pineapple Ice
To a two-pound can of pineapples add three quarts water, half a box gelatine (prepared as for jelly), juice of two oranges, whites of four eggs. Remove the black and hard pieces of nine-apple, then pass it through the colander by beating with a potato-masher. Sweeten to your taste and freeze.--Mrs. I. H. Pineapple Ice.
One large pineapple peeled and finely grated, juice of one lemon, two quarts water. Sweeten to the taste, and freeze hard.--Mrs. G. D. L. Pineapple Ice.
Dissolve one box gelatine in one gallon water. Beat two pounds pineapple through a colander with a wooden pestle. Add the juice of two lemons and the juice of two oranges; sweeten to your taste, but add more sugar than is required for ice cream.
Beat six eggs separately and stir in the mixture. When half frozen, beat rapidly half a dozen times, at intervals.
This makes two gallons when frozen.--Mrs. E. T.
Three versions of the same water ice from three contributors, printed one after another. Two of them fold in raw egg that never sees heat, which is the sticking point; the middle version, Mrs. G. D. L.'s, is simply fruit, lemon, water and sugar.
- Why the cautionMrs. I. H.'s ice carries four raw egg whites and Mrs. E. T.'s carries six whole raw eggs, beaten in and then frozen. Freezing does not kill Salmonella; it preserves it, and the mixture is never brought anywhere near a safe temperature. Anyone wanting a meringue-lightened ice should follow a current recipe built on pasteurized egg or a cooked syrup base.
- The egg-free versionMrs. G. D. L.'s recipe -- one grated pineapple, juice of a lemon, two quarts water, sugar to taste -- has nothing in it that raises a food-safety question. It is a plain water ice and behaves like one.
- "Nine-apple"A typesetting slip for pineapple. The instruction is to cut out the dark eyes and the woody core before mashing the flesh through a colander.
- A box of gelatineNineteenth-century boxes of granulated or sheet gelatine ran roughly an ounce, about four modern quarter-ounce envelopes. Half a box is therefore about two envelopes. Exact strength varied by brand, so the amount is approximate at best.
- Gelatine and fresh pineappleMrs. I. H.'s gelatine recipe calls for canned fruit; Mrs. E. T.'s says only "two pounds pineapple" without specifying. Raw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatin and leaves it slack; canning heat destroys the enzyme. The fresh-fruit version uses no gelatine at all.
- "Freeze" means a churnThese were made in a hand-crank freezer packed with ice and rock salt, which is why Mrs. E. T. says to beat the mixture rapidly at intervals when half frozen. Without that agitation a water ice sets into a solid block of coarse crystals.
- Sugar and hardnessMrs. E. T.'s note to use more sugar than for ice cream reflects that a lean water ice tastes flat when cold. Sugar also depresses the freezing point, so heavy sweetening gives a softer, slushier ice -- which is at odds with Mrs. G. D. L.'s "freeze hard."
- ScaleMrs. E. T. states two gallons finished. These are party quantities for a long table, not a household dessert.
Water ices were a fixture of Virginia tables alongside ice cream, and by the 1870s a Southern hostess with an ice house and a crank freezer was expected to produce one for summer entertaining. Pineapple is the tell of the period: the canned fruit that opens two of these three recipes was a comparatively new convenience, arriving from Baltimore packing houses, and a two-pound can made a large, showy ice for a fraction of the trouble of sourcing fresh fruit inland. Housekeeping in Old Virginia was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree in 1877 from contributions by housekeepers in Virginia and sister states, credited by initials rather than by name, which is why the same dish appears three times over with three sets of initials attached -- the book preserves the variations rather than reconciling them, and the differences between these three, egg or no egg, gelatine or none, canned or grated fresh, are a fair snapshot of how one dish drifted from kitchen to kitchen.