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Pineapple Filling
1 cup grated pineapple 2 tablespoons lemon juice 1 tablespoon orange rind sugar Mix pineapple, fruit juice and rind, and enough confectioners' sugar to make of consistency to spread.
A one-line uncooked filling for layer cakes, typical of the period in giving no sugar quantity at all. The whole recipe turns on how wet the pineapple is when it goes into the bowl.
- Drain the fruit firstGrated pineapple carries a great deal of juice, and if you add sugar to the undrained pulp you will be stirring in a cup or more before it thickens, giving a filling that is cloyingly sweet and still runny. Drain the pulp in a sieve, press it lightly, then build the filling from the drained solids.
- How much sugarFor 1 cup of well-drained pineapple, expect roughly 1 to 1 1/2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar to reach a spreadable consistency. Add it in stages; the original leaves the amount open because the fruit varies.
- "Grated pineapple"Pineapple pulp and juice together, whether grated fresh against a grater or bought already grated in a can; the recipe does not say which. Canned crushed pineapple, drained, is the closest modern equivalent and is easier to control.
- Fresh versus canned, and gelatinFresh pineapple contains bromelain, an active protease. It will not hurt a plain sugar filling, but do not combine this with gelatin or a gelatin-set cream, which it will refuse to set. Canned pineapple has been heated and the enzyme is deactivated.
- 1 tablespoon orange rindThat is the finely grated zest of about one whole orange, and it is assertive against a single cup of fruit. Grate only the coloured layer, and use two teaspoons if you want the pineapple forward.
- "Fruit juice"The instruction refers back to the lemon juice already listed, not to a third ingredient. If the drained pineapple juice is added back as well, the filling will need proportionally more sugar.
- Yield and assemblyEnough to fill one two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake. Because nothing is cooked and nothing binds it, spread it no more than a few hours before serving, keep the cake cold, and leave a clear margin at the edge so it does not slide out under the top layer.
Lowney's Cook Book was published in 1907 under the name of Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, the Boston chocolate maker, and like other manufacturer-sponsored books of the era it surrounds its chocolate recipes with a full general household repertoire — which is why a pineapple cake filling sits in the dessert section of a chocolate book. Uncooked fillings bound only with confectioners' sugar were common in the American layer cake in this period, and canned Hawaiian pineapple was reaching mainland shelves in these years, making tropical fruit a more dependable pantry item. The brevity of the recipe — no quantity for the sugar, no yield, no mention of what cake it belongs to — reflects a book written for cooks who already knew that a filling was spread between layers and needed only the flavour combination suggested to them.