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Pineapple Tarts
Cook one cup grated pineapple, one fourth cup sugar, two egg yolks, grated rind and juice of one lemon, and few grains of salt, until thick. Chill and fill tarts.
A lemon-and-pineapple curd, thickened with yolks alone, spooned into pastry shells the book assumes you already have. The whole difficulty is in not scrambling the eggs.
- Cook it gentlyYolk proteins begin to thicken from around 150F, and a yolk-thickened mixture will curdle not far above the point at which it sets. Use a double boiler or the lowest possible direct heat, stir constantly, and pull the pan when the mixture coats a spoon and holds a line drawn through it.
- "Grated pineapple"Fresh pineapple rubbed on a grater, pulp and juice together, though grated pineapple was also sold canned by this period. A cup of well-drained canned crushed pineapple is the closest substitute; if it is packed in heavy syrup, cut the sugar back.
- BromelainFresh pineapple contains an enzyme that attacks protein and will keep a custard slack. Cooking the fruit through, as here, deactivates it, so do not be tempted to fold in extra raw pineapple at the end.
- The shellsThe recipe assumes small pastry cases already made and baked, presumably from the book's own paste recipe; no instructions for them are given here. Line tartlet tins, prick, weight with beans and bake in a hot oven until dry and pale gold, then cool completely before filling.
- Fill cold, serve soonChilling is not optional: warm filling in a baked shell turns the pastry damp within minutes. Fill no more than an hour or two before serving.
- YieldRoughly a cup and a half of mixture, which should fill something like eight to ten 2 1/2-inch tartlets, or a single small shallow shell.
- The whitesTwo whites are left over; meringue was one common period use for them.
Lowney's Cook Book was compiled by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and published in 1907 - one of many cookbooks issued by food firms to put their product in American kitchens. The dessert chapter ranges well beyond chocolate, and pineapple turns up repeatedly at a moment when commercial canning in Hawaii was expanding through the decade, though canned pineapple was not yet a cheap household staple. The filling itself is built like a lemon curd - a preparation named in the nineteenth century, with antecedents in the lemon-and-egg cheesecake fillings of the eighteenth - with fruit pulp standing in for part of the acid. Small filled tarts of this kind are often said to have been afternoon-tea fare and a convenient way to use yolks left from a cake made with whites.