Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Pineapple Marmalade
Pineapple Marmalade
Small pineapples should be used for this, and they should be peeled, and all eyes and discolored portions carefully removed; then cut into small pieces, weigh them, and use three-quarters of a pound of crushed loaf sugar for every pound of the fruit; place the pieces of pineapple in an earthenware jar, stand the jar in a saucepan of water and boil until they become quite clear. Place the sugar in a preserving-pan with a teacupful of water for each two pounds of sugar and add the fruit, when the whole may be boiled for half an hour. Then move the pan off the fire and let the marmalade cool, when it should be placed in jars. Put a round of white paper soaked in brandy on each jar, then cover with heavy paper tying it down well.
A two-stage preserve: the fruit is first softened gently in a water bath, then finished in syrup. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the vessels and the sealing method need translating.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold as a hard cone that had to be broken up and crushed; "crushed loaf sugar" is simply refined white sugar. Ordinary granulated is the direct replacement, weight for weight.
- The jar in a saucepan of waterThis is a bain-marie. Pineapple scorches and turns caramel-flavoured over direct heat, so the first cooking is deliberately indirect and slow; a heatproof bowl over simmering water, or a covered dish in a pan of water, does the same job. "Quite clear" means the white opaque flesh has turned translucent; the recipe gives no time, so go by appearance.
- A teacupfulNot a standardised measure; reckon it at roughly 4 to 6 fl oz per two pounds of sugar. The exact figure matters little since the water boils off; err on the low side if your pineapple is very juicy.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, heavy pan with sloping sides, designed to maximise evaporation. A wide stainless or enamelled pot is fine; avoid unlined aluminium, which reacts with the acid in pineapple.
- Half an hour, and the setPineapple carries very little pectin, so this never sets like a citrus marmalade and is not meant to. Half an hour at a rolling boil gives a thick, syrupy conserve; if you want it firmer, cook to 220F on a sugar thermometer rather than simply extending the time, which darkens the fruit.
- The brandy paper and the sealA round of brandy-soaked paper laid on the surface, then a tied paper cover, was a standard nineteenth-century mould barrier; here the recipe has the marmalade cooled before it is jarred and papered. It is not an airtight seal and does not sterilise. Treat the result as a refrigerator preserve, good a few weeks, or put it up in sterilised jars processed in a boiling water bath by current guidance.
- Choosing the fruit"Small pineapples" reflects imported fruit that generally ran smaller than the large commercial varieties now on sale. Whatever you use, cut out the eyes as directed, and the woody core too; the core will stay stringy no matter how long it cooks.
- YieldTwo pounds of prepared fruit with a pound and a half of sugar makes roughly three to four half-pint jars, depending on how far you boil it down.
Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his cook book in 1896, at the point when pineapple was shifting from luxury curiosity to something a hotel kitchen could buy in quantity. Faster steamers from the Caribbean brought fresh fruit more readily within reach of a New York larder, and preserving it was the obvious way to carry it past its very short ripe window. The method itself is thoroughly English in ancestry — the earthenware jar set in water, the preserving-pan, and above all the round of brandy-soaked paper laid on the surface — all of which appear in British household manuals decades earlier. The brandy was understood to discourage mould, which it does to a degree, though it was never a substitute for a real seal.