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Pineapple Glace
Carefully peel and remove all discolored portions of a pineapple and cut it into slices about half an inch in thickness. Place in a preserving-pan a pound of crushed loaf-sugar and a pint of water and boil for ten minutes; put in the sliced pineapple and boil for fifteen minutes longer. Remove the slices of pineapple and place them on a sieve, to dry either in the sun or near the fire for about half an hour. Boil up the syrup, reduce it until quite hard, and then dip into it the slices of pineapple, put them on a buttered plate, and dust with caster-sugar. When they become well-dried and hardened, put some fresh green leaves in a glass dish, put in the slices of pineapple, and serve.
This is candied pineapple, finished with a hard sugar shell. The whole thing hinges on the second boiling of the syrup, which the original describes only as "quite hard" — that is a thermometer reading, not a guess.
- "Reduce it until quite hard"This means hard-crack stage, 300–310F on a candy thermometer. Below about 295F the coating stays tacky and the slices weep within a day; much above 310F the sugar takes on colour and a burnt edge.
- Loaf sugar and caster sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar cast in a cone and broken up for use; crushed loaf sugar served where we would now use granulated, so use ordinary white granulated, one pound, about 2 1/4 cups. Caster sugar is superfine sugar, sold as such or made by pulsing granulated in a spice grinder.
- Preserving-panA wide, heavy pan; period preserving-pans were commonly copper or brass. Any heavy-bottomed saucepan with room for the syrup to boil up well above its resting level works; wide is better than tall for reducing quickly.
- Pineapple prepHalf-inch slices from a ripe fruit; the recipe says only to peel and remove discoloured portions, and does not mention the core, though it is normally taken out. 'Discolored portions' most likely covers the eyes and any bruised flesh. Fully ripe fruit gives better flavour but softer slices, so handle them on a slotted spoon.
- The fifteen-minute boilFifteen minutes in the syrup is what the original specifies for half-inch slices; the aim is to drive syrup into the fruit rather than cook it tender. Thinner slices will be more fragile, so keep to the stated thickness.
- DryingHalf an hour in the sun or by the fire is a warm, dry-air step. A rack in a 150F oven with the door ajar does the same job. The surface must be dry to the touch or the hot syrup will spit when the slices go in.
- HumidityHard-crack sugar pulls water from the air. Finish and serve these the same day, or keep them in a sealed tin with a desiccant packet; in a humid kitchen the shell softens within hours.
- The green leavesA period plating conceit. If you copy it, use leaves known to be food-safe and unsprayed — lemon, bay, mint — rather than whatever is decorative, and treat them as a liner rather than something eaten.
- YieldOne medium pineapple gives roughly 10 to 14 slices, enough for six to eight as a sweetmeat with coffee.
Glacé fruit — fruit boiled in syrup, then sealed in a hard sugar shell — belongs to the old confectioner's craft of preserving by saturation, a technique that reached European kitchens through Arab sugar-working and was well established in English and French confectionery manuals long before this book. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's collection reflects the Waldorf's position at the top end of 1890s New York dining, where pineapple was often said to retain something of the prestige of an expensive imported fruit, though imported and canned pineapple were increasingly available by then, and where the pastry department was expected to turn out sugar work as garnish and as after-dinner sweetmeat. Oscar himself was the hotel's maître d'hôtel rather than its chef, and the book gathers the house repertoire of that kitchen.