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Dried Pineapple
Peel and cut out any discolored parts of a pineapple, cut them in slices one-fourth inch thick, put them in a preserving-pan with some syrup at twenty-two degrees and let simmer for ten minutes. Put the pineapple and syrup in a white-lined pan and leave them till the following day. Strain the syrup off, boil it and pour it over the pineapple again. Proceed in the same way the two following days. On the fourth day take the slices from the syrup, drain them well and put them apart from each other on wire trays. Stand the trays in dishes to catch the dripping and array these in the screen. When dry, remove, and when cold, pack in boxes between sheets of white paper.
This is candied pineapple by the slow confectioner's method: four days of progressively stronger syrup, then a low, dry heat. Nothing about it is difficult, but the sugar density and the drying step are where old vocabulary hides.
- "Syrup at twenty-two degrees"That is degrees Baume, read on a confectioner's saccharometer, not an oven or thermometer reading. Twenty-two Baume is a medium syrup of roughly 40 percent sugar by weight. It is deliberately weak at the start; the fruit would shrivel in anything heavier.
- Why the syrup is reboiled dailyEach day the fruit gives up water to the syrup and takes up sugar. Boiling the drained syrup drives off that water, so the next soak is more concentrated than the last. Skipping days, or starting with heavy syrup, gives tough, hollow slices instead of translucent ones.
- Ten minutes and no moreThe initial simmer is only to soften the slices enough to accept sugar. Pineapple's coarse fibre means a long boil tends to turn the rings stringy and cloudy.
- "White-lined pan"A vessel lined with white porcelain enamel, specified because pineapple is acidic and bare copper or unlined iron would discolour it and pick up a metallic taste. Any glass, stainless or enamelled dish serves.
- "The screen"A warm drying closet or screened rack near the range, held at a gentle heat rather than an oven temperature. A modern dehydrator on a low setting is the nearest equivalent; the lowest setting of an oven, propped ajar, also works, but watch for scorching at the edges.
- Core and eyesThe recipe mentions only discoloured parts and says nothing about the core. Cutting the woody core out of each slice with a small cutter will give a more pleasant finished piece.
- DonenessThe slices should be firm, tacky and no longer wet to the touch, but still pliable — not brittle. Cool completely before packing, or trapped steam will make them sticky and invite mould.
- Yield and keepingInterleaved with paper in a tin, in a cool dry place, they keep for months.
Candied and dried fruit of this kind belonged to the confectioner rather than the cook, and the recipe reads like it: a Baume hydrometer, a preserving-pan, a drying screen, and four days of unhurried attention are the equipment of a professional pastry department, which is exactly what Oscar Tschirky had at the Waldorf. The method itself " successive soaks in strengthening syrup " is centuries old and was the standard European technique for preserving fruit before canning and freezing, since sugar-saturated flesh will not spoil. Pineapple was still something of a luxury in the 1890s but no longer a rarity; Caribbean and Central American fruit had come into New York markets in quantity, and a hotel kitchen could afford to spend four days on it.