Pineapple
Peel and slice thin, just before eating. Sprinkle pulverized sugar over it, but nothing else, as the flavor of this delicious fruit is impaired by adding other ingredients. Keep on ice till wanted.--Mrs. S. T.
A dressing-room recipe rather than a cooking one: the whole point is restraint, and the instruction that matters is to slice at the last minute so the juice stays in the fruit rather than in the bowl.
- Pulverized sugarIn this period, sugar ground fine (usually from a loaf or lump), without the anti-caking starch added to modern confectioners' sugar. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closest match; confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will cloud the juice.
- "Keep on ice"The refrigerator, at 40F or below. The original assumed an icebox, where the fruit sat directly on or beside a block of ice — chilled hard, which suits pineapple.
- Choosing the fruitPineapple does not ripen further after cutting from the plant, so buy on smell rather than colour: a full, sweet scent at the base and a slight give to the shell. Imported fruit of this period was picked well before ripeness to survive the voyage, which may be part of why sugar is called for.
- Peeling and coringCut off top and base, stand the fruit up and pare down in strips deep enough to remove the eyes, which are woody. Slice crosswise as directed and stamp or cut out the fibrous core from each round.
- Slice thin, and lateThin rounds take the sugar evenly and dissolve it into a light syrup. Cut any length of time ahead and the slices weep and slacken, which is why the recipe says just before eating.
- Why nothing elsePineapple contains bromelain, which digests protein: fresh pineapple will not set with gelatin and can thin dairy mixtures and turn them bitter. Whatever Mrs. S. T.'s reasoning, sugar is the one addition that causes no trouble.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity. One medium pineapple, sliced thin, will serve roughly four to six as a dessert.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of these one-line entries signed with initials, and this one reads as much as a ruling as a recipe. Fresh pineapple inland depended on two nineteenth-century trades running at once — shipping bringing fruit up from Cuba and the Bahamas to Atlantic ports, and the northern ice trade that put a block of ice in a middle-class Southern pantry. The pineapple's long-standing association with hospitality in Virginia and the Carolinas, carved into bedposts and gateposts, is generally traced to the same source: it was a costly imported luxury, and setting one on the table said so.