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Pine-apple, Preserved
INGREDIENTS. - To every lb. of fruit, weighed after being pared, allow 1 lb. of loaf sugar ; 1/4 pint of water. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per pot.
The pines for making this preserve should be perfectly sound but ripe. Cut them into rather thick slices, as the fruit shrinks very much in the boiling. Pare off the rind carefully, that none of the pine be wasted; and, in doing so, notch it in and out, as the edge cannot be smoothly cut without great waste. Dissolve a portion of the sugar in a preserving-pan, with pint of water; when this is melted, gradually add the remainder of the sugar, and boil it until it forms a clear syrup, skimming well. As soon as this is the case, put in the pieces of pine, and boil well for at least 1/2 hour, or until it looks nearly transparent. Put it into pots, cover down when cold, and store away in a dry place.
TIME. hour to boil the fruit.
SEASONABLE.-Foreign pines, in July and August.
Pine-apple, Preserved. (For present use). INGREDIENTS EDIENTS - Pine-apple, sugar, water. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
Cut the pine into slices 1/4 inch in thickness; peel them, and remove the hard part from the middle. Put the parings and hard pieces into a stewpan, with sufficient water to cover them, and boil for 1/4 hour. Strain the liquor, and put in the slices of pine.
Stew them for 10 minutes, add sufficient sugar to sweeten the whole nicely, and boil again for another 1/4 hour skim well, and the preserve will be ready for use. It must be eaten soon, as it will keep but a very short time.
TIME. hour to boil the parings in water; PINE-APPLE WATER ICE. 10 minutes to boil the pine without sugar, 1/4 hour with sugar.
SEASONABLE. - Foreign, in July and August; English, all the year.
Two recipes run together here: a long-keeping sugar preserve in the proportion of one pound of sugar to one pound of fruit, and a quick compote meant to be eaten within a day or two. The text is corrupted in a couple of places where the original printed fractions, so treat the water quantities as guides rather than gospel.
- The garbled measuresThe ingredient line calls for "1/4 pint of water" per pound of fruit but the method then says "pint of water"; the quarter-pint figure is the sensible one, about 5 fl oz or 2/3 cup. Likewise "TIME. hour to boil the fruit" should read half an hour, matching the method.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined white sugar sold in a cone and broken up with nippers, prized because it dissolved to a clear syrup with little scum. Ordinary granulated or preserving sugar is the direct equivalent; the skimming the recipe insists on is largely a legacy of less pure sugar.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or brass pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed stainless pan works; width matters more than depth because evaporation is what concentrates the syrup.
- Paring and notchingThe instruction to "notch it in and out" most likely refers to the eyes, which sit in a spiral and run deeper than the skin. Cutting a smooth cylinder wastes a great deal of flesh, which is the waste the recipe is warning against.
- Why it will not setFresh pineapple is low in pectin, so this is candied fruit in syrup rather than jam. Boil until the slices look nearly transparent, as the recipe says, and judge by that appearance rather than by any setting test.
- BromelainRaw pineapple contains an enzyme that digests protein, which is why fresh pineapple ruins gelatine and stings the mouth. The half-hour boil destroys it entirely, so the finished preserve is safe to set in a jelly or serve with dairy.
- Storage, honestly"Cover down when cold, and store away in a dry place" means a paper or waxed-paper cover in a cool larder, which is not proof against mould. Use properly sterilised jars sealed while the preserve is boiling hot, and refrigerate once opened.
- The parings liquorIn the second recipe the skins and core are simmered a quarter of an hour to make a flavoured cooking liquid, then discarded. It is a sound piece of thrift and gives the compote much more pineapple character than plain water would.
- YieldNeither recipe says. A single 3 lb pineapple yields roughly 1 1/2 lb of pared flesh, which with equal sugar makes something in the region of 2 1/2 lb of finished preserve, or about five half-pint jars.
Pineapple reached British tables long before it became affordable: for much of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was grown at home in heated "pineries", forced in tan-bark and dung beds on grand estates, and a single fruit was a display piece rather than an ingredient. The note that English pines are seasonable "all the year" while foreign ones appear in July and August reflects exactly that division — hothouse fruit available to whoever could keep a hothouse, and imported fruit arriving in the summer shipping season, chiefly from the West Indies. By the 1860s prices had fallen far enough that Mrs Beeton could quote tenpence a pot and treat the fruit as something a middle-class household might preserve in quantity, which is itself the point of the entry: a luxury being written into ordinary domestic practice. The two versions, one for the store cupboard and one "for present use", show the period's standard approach to any perishable fruit — sugar heavily to keep it, or eat it at once.