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Pine-apple Ice Cream
INGREDIENTS for ices for 8 persons. lb. of tinned pine, the juice of a small lemon, 1 pint of cream, 1/2 pint of milk, 1/4 lb. of white sugar.
AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Cut the pine into dice, bruise it in a mortar, then add the lemon-juice, sugar, PINE-APPLE ICE. cream and milk. Mix them thoroughly, press through a hair-sieve, and freeze.
TIME.-25 minutes to freeze the ice.
SEASONABLE at any time.
An uncooked ice, essentially sweetened pineapple purée let down with cream and milk and churned. It comes together in minutes, and everything depends on getting the mixture very cold before it goes into the machine.
- The pineapple quantityThe weight of tinned pine has lost its fraction in the original and reads simply as "lb." A half-pound (about 8 oz drained) of tinned pineapple suits 1 pint cream and 1/2 pint milk; use that unless you want a more assertive fruit flavour.
- Imperial pintsMrs Beeton's pint is 20 fl oz, so 1 pint of cream is 2 1/2 US cups and 1/2 pint of milk is 1 1/4 cups. Single (light) cream or a mix of double cream and milk both work; the mixture should be pourable.
- Tinned pineapple is the right choiceFresh pineapple contains bromelain, which attacks dairy proteins and can leave the cream thin and faintly bitter. Canning heats the fruit enough to destroy the enzyme, so tinned pine sidesteps the problem, whatever the recipe's own reason for calling for it. If you use fresh, simmer the purée for a few minutes and cool it first.
- Mortar and hair-sieveA food processor or blender does the bruising. Press the purée through a fine nylon or stainless sieve rather than a hair one; the point is to catch the tough fibres, which never soften in a frozen mixture.
- Chill before churningThe twenty-five minutes given assumes a pail freezer packed with ice and salt and a mixture already cold. Refrigerate the mixed base for at least four hours, then churn in a domestic machine for 20-30 minutes and firm it in the freezer for two hours.
- Sugar and texture1/4 lb (about 1/2 cup) sugar to a pint and a half of liquid plus the fruit is restrained by modern standards, and sugar is what keeps an ice scoopable. Expect a firm, rather icy result; an extra 2 tablespoons will soften it noticeably without making it sweet.
- YieldAround two pints of finished ice, which covers the eight modest servings the recipe claims. Serve the day it is made.
Iced creams flavoured with pineapple appear in English confectioners' books from the eighteenth century, when pines were grown in heated pits and hothouses on great estates at enormous expense and were a byword for luxury. What makes this version late-Victorian rather than Georgian is the phrase "tinned pine": by the closing decades of the nineteenth century canned pineapple had reached ordinary British grocers, which may well be why the recipe can be marked "seasonable at any time." The average cost of two shillings still puts it in the realm of a treat, and the freezing method assumed is the hand-cranked pail packed with ice and coarse salt that was standard domestic equipment before mechanical refrigeration.