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Pineapple Lemonade
Slice pineapple and pare deep enough to take out all the eyes. Prepare the inside to serve, and save the centers. Put them in a kettle, add the rinds, cut into inch pieces, and over all pour a quart of boiling water. Simmer for a half an hour covered. Squeeze one lemon and put the rind into kettle with pineapple rind. Strain the water off through a cheesecloth, pressing hard to get all the juice of the rind. Add one cup of sugar and one cup of tea. As some pineapples are much more sour than others, more sugar may be necessary.
A thrift drink: the fruit is served at table and the trimmings become the beverage. The method is sound, and the only real decisions are how sweet and how strong to make it.
- What you actually useThe pineapple flavour comes entirely from the peel, the eyes and the fibrous core, with lemon, sugar and tea added. The recipe assumes the trimmings of a single pineapple to a quart of water.
- Pare deepThe instruction to cut deep enough to remove all the eyes matters here more than usual, since those pared strips are the flavor base. Scrub the outside of the fruit before cutting; the rind goes into the pot.
- "One cup of tea"This means a cup of brewed tea, not dry leaves; the recipe does not say which kind. Make it about as strong as you would drink it; it is there for tannin and body, and oversteeped bitter tea will dominate.
- Simmer, do not boil hardHalf an hour covered at a bare simmer keeps the aroma in the pot. A rolling boil drives off the volatile pineapple esters and leaves a flat, cooked-fruit taste.
- Pressing the clothUseful flavour and juice remain in the rind and core pulp, so wring the cheesecloth hard as the recipe directs. The liquid will be cloudy; that is correct.
- SweeteningAdd the cup of sugar while the liquid is still hot so it dissolves, then taste after it cools — cold liquid reads considerably less sweet than warm.
- Yield and servingRoughly a quart, the amount of water called for. Chill before serving; treat it as a fresh drink rather than something to store.
Recipes of this kind — rind lemonades, apple-paring drinks, cider from windfalls — belong to a broad late-nineteenth-century habit of extracting a second dish from waste, and they turn up in American household manuals alongside instructions for using stale bread and bones. The addition of tea is characteristic of the period's punches and summer beverages, where tea supplied astringency and a little colour to fruit drinks that would otherwise taste thin. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, also issued cookery and household volumes aimed at middle-class housekeepers.