Pine-apple Chips
INGREDIENTS. Pine-apples; sugar to taste.
Pare and slice the fruit thinly, put it on dishes and strew over it plenty of pounded sugar. Keep it in a hot closet, or very slow oven, 8 or 10 days, and turn the fruit very every day until dry; then put the pieces of pine on tins and place them in a quick oven for 10 minutes. Let them cool, and store them away in dry boxes, with paper between the layers.
TIME -8 to 10 days.
SEASONABLE. - Foreign pines, in July and August.
Pine-apple Fritters. (An Elegant Dish.)-INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. A small pine-apple, or a tinned one, a small wineglassful of brandy or liqueur, 2 oz. of sifted sugar; batter as for apple fritters (which see). AVERAGE COST, 2s.
This elegant dish, although it may appear extravagant, is really not so if made when pine-apples are plentiful. We receive them now in such large quantities from the West Indies, that at times they may be purchased at an exceedingly low rate; it would not, of course, be economical to use the pines which are grown in our English pineries for the purposes of fritters, but tinned pines, which preserve their flavour better than any other fruit, answer well for fritters. Pare the pine with as little waste as possible, cut it into rather thin slices, and soak these slices in the above proportion of brandy or liqueur and pounded sugar for 4 hours; then make a batter the same as for apple fritters, substituting cream for the milk, and using a smaller quantity of flour; when this is ready, dip in the pieces of pine and fry them in boiling lard from 5 to 8 minutes; turn them, when sufficiently brown, on one side, and, when done, drain them from the lard before the fire, dish them on a white doyley of paper, strew over them sifted sugar and serve quickly.
TIME. 5 to 8 minutes.
SEASONABLE in July and August.
PINE-APPLE, PRESERVED.
Two recipes run together here: sugared pineapple slices slowly dried into chips, and battered slices fried as fritters. Both hinge on getting water out of a very wet fruit before it meets heat.
- The hinge: thin slices, turned dailyThe sugar draws juice out of the fruit and the slow heat evaporates it; slices cut thin, as the recipe directs, dry far more evenly than thick ones, which tend to stay leathery in the middle. Turn them each day as instructed; any syrup that collects can be poured off so the undersides do not sit in liquid.
- "Hot closet" and "very slow oven"A hot closet was the warming cupboard beside the range, gently warm rather than hot. A dehydrator on a low setting, or the coolest oven setting with the door propped open, is the nearest modern equivalent; many domestic ovens will not run low enough and will colour the fruit.
- "Quick oven" for the finishUsually reckoned at around 400-425F, and the 10 minutes is meant only to set the surface and drive off the last moisture. Watch it: sugared pineapple scorches quickly at that heat.
- StorageThey are dry, not sterile. Cool them completely before boxing or condensation will form under the paper; a tin in a cool cupboard is fine for a few weeks, longer in the freezer.
- WineglassfulIn Beeton this is about 2 fl oz. Brandy, kirsch or a rum works; four hours of soaking is ample and the slices should be patted dry before battering or the coating slides off.
- Batter and frying fatThe fritter batter is the apple-fritter batter made with cream instead of milk and less flour, so it is thinner and richer. Lard at 350-375F is what "boiling lard" means; any neutral oil behaves the same.
- Frying timeThe recipe calls for "rather thin slices", for which 5 to 8 minutes is generous; tinned rings, or slices about 1/4 in. thick, will brown in a few minutes a side, and longer only softens the fruit.
- Yield and servingThe original reckons the dish for four or five persons. Drain on a rack rather than the "doyley of paper", strew with sifted sugar and serve at once, as the batter goes limp within minutes.
Pineapples reached British tables by two very different routes in Beeton's day, and this entry sits between them. Wealthy estates grew their own in heated "pineries" from the eighteenth century onward, at what was often said to be ruinous cost per fruit, which is why the text carefully advises against wasting English-grown pines on fritters; at the same time faster shipping from the West Indies was landing cargoes cheap enough that a pineapple could be an ordinary dessert. The recommendation of "tinned pines" is a period marker in itself, canned fruit being a mid-Victorian novelty that the household books were still assessing item by item. Drying fruit in the warming closet, meanwhile, is generally traced to the older preserving tradition of the still-room, where the residual heat of the kitchen range appears to have been treated as a free resource to be used for days at a stretch.