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Pineapple Preserves
Parboil the pineapples, then peel and cut in thick slices, carefully taking out the cores, which, if allowed to remain, will cause the preserves to ferment. Put a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit, and let it remain all night to make the syrup. Boil then till done, without adding a drop of water to the syrup.--Mrs. F.C.
A straightforward equal-weight preserve that depends on the fruit's own juice for its syrup. Two details in the original are doing real work: the coring and the overnight rest.
- Take the cores seriouslyThe fibrous core is the one instruction Mrs. F.C. bothers to explain: left in, she says, it will cause the preserves to ferment. It is in any case woody and stays so through long boiling. Cut it out completely, along with any remaining eyes.
- ParboilingThe fruit is boiled briefly whole, before peeling, which loosens the skin; a short parboil also softens the flesh so it takes up syrup rather than shrivelling. With a modern 3-4 lb fruit, a few minutes should do.
- A pound to a poundWeigh the fruit after peeling and coring, not before. A 3 lb pineapple yields roughly 1 1/2 lb of usable flesh, so about 3 1/2 cups of sugar.
- The overnight restSugar draws juice out of the fruit by osmosis, so by morning the slices sit in their own syrup. Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature or, in a warm kitchen, refrigerated. This is why no water is added; adding any would only have to be boiled off again, at the cost of colour and flavour.
- "Boil till done"Syrup sets at about 220F (104C) at sea level; failing a thermometer, a spoonful cooled on a chilled plate should wrinkle when pushed. Timing will vary with the pan and the fruit -- work by the test, not the clock -- and the slices should turn translucent.
- Fresh fruit onlyCanned pineapple is already cooked and packed in syrup and will collapse into shreds. Use fresh, and ripe enough to smell sweet at the base.
- Yield and keepingAbout three half-pint jars from a single large pineapple. The original gives no instruction for sealing or storing; refrigerate the finished preserve and use within a month, or follow a current tested water-bath process if you want shelf-stable jars.
Pineapple was not the everyday fruit in nineteenth-century Virginia that it is now, but it was not a rarity either. Putting them down in an equal weight of sugar was one answer, and the method here belongs to a whole family of "pound for pound" preserves that fill the fruit chapters of American receipt books of the period, watermelon rind, quince, damson and citron among them. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, credited on its title page contributions from two hundred and fifty of Virginia's housewives, which is why so many entries carry an initialled attribution like this one rather than a full name.