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Pineapple Tarts
Peel and cut into fine slices a medium-sized pineapple, lay them in a basin and mix in with them three ounces of powdered loaf sugar; line a pie-dish with paste, spread over it a tablespoonful of apple-sauce, and arrange the pineapple on top; take three ounces more of paste, roll it out lengthwise two feet long, and fold carefully in two so as to form a very narrow strip, roll a trifle more until about thirty inches long by about one inch wide, and pare off both sides evenly, so as to make it exactly one inch in width. Moisten the edge of the pie with beaten egg, and place the strip around fastening the ends together one over the other, glaze the top of the strip with beaten egg, place the pie in a moderate oven and bake for fifty minutes. Remove to the door, dredge the pie well with powdered sugar, and return it to the oven for a few minutes to let the sugar melt, and spread evenly over the top two ounces of sweet jelly, and serve.
A single-crust fresh pineapple pie finished with a decorative pastry rim rather than a top crust. Two details carry the whole thing: coring the pineapple properly, and the thin layer of apple sauce that keeps the juice from flooding the pastry.
- Loaf sugar, powderedLoaf sugar was hard refined sugar broken from a cone and crushed at home; powdered loaf sugar corresponds roughly to modern superfine (caster) or confectioners' sugar. Three ounces is about 6 to 7 tablespoons of superfine sugar, or about three-quarters of a cup of confectioners'.
- Moderate ovenBake at about 350F; a 'moderate' oven in books of this period is generally read as somewhere between 350 and 375F. Fifty minutes, as directed, suits a filled single-crust pie of this kind; the pastry rim will colour first, so tent it with foil if it darkens before the base is set.
- "Remove to the door"This means draw the pie to the open oven mouth so it does not cool while you dredge it with sugar, then push it back in. The sugar melts to a thin glaze in three or four minutes.
- The apple sauce is structuralThe apple sauce -- Fresh pineapple throws a good deal of juice, and the tablespoonful of apple sauce spread on the raw pastry appears to be there as a thin barrier between the juice and the base. The recipe does not say whether the sauce is sweetened.
- Core the fruitA medium pineapple yields roughly 3 cups of sliced flesh once peeled, eyed and cored. The fibrous core will not soften in fifty minutes; cut it out.
- The pastry rim"Paste" here is simply pastry dough; the recipe does not say which kind. Three ounces is about 85 g, enough for a strip 30 inches by 1 inch. Rolling long, folding in two, then rolling again gives a doubled strip for a raised border. Chill the strip before you fit and egg-wash it or it will slump.
- Sweet jelly finishTwo ounces of a clear jelly — apple, quince or redcurrant — warmed until pourable and brushed over the fruit. Add it after the pie leaves the oven for the last time, not before.
- YieldOne 9-inch pie, six to eight servings. Serve barely warm; hot from the oven the juices have not set.
Oscar Tschirky's book collects the working repertoire of a large New York hotel kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, and this tart belongs to the moment when fresh pineapple stopped being a luxury centrepiece and became something a pastry cook could slice by the case. Steamships brought whole fruit from the Caribbean to Eastern markets in quantity, and hotel menus of the period lean on it heavily. The construction is straight from the French pâtisserie tradition Oscar's kitchen was built on: an open fruit tart with a rolled band of paste for a rim, egg-glazed, dusted and returned to the oven so the sugar melts to a shine, then finished with warm jelly. The term "paste" for pastry dough is the older English usage, commonly found in nineteenth-century cookbooks and generally said to have faded from use in the twentieth.