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Preserved Pineapple
Select thoroughly-ripe pineapples, peel and cut them into slices. Weight them, and allow three-quarters of a pound of crushed loaf sugar to each pound of the fruit and place them in a preserving-pan in layers, with sugar between each layer, leaving them over night. On the following morning put the pan over rather a slow fire, and when the pineapples are very hot, but not soft, remove them, drain each slice and lay on a dish. Continue boiling the syrup until thickly reduced. Pack the slices in glass jars, pour in a half wineglassful of rum and enough of the syrup to fill them and let them get quite cold, after which put in each jar a round of white paper dipped in brandy, cover with parchment and tie securely. Keep in a dry place until wanted
This is a nineteenth-century pantry preserve, and the parts of it that matter most — the seal and the storage — do not meet any current standard for shelf-stable canning. The notes below explain the vocabulary and then why the method fails.
- Why it fails: no seal, no processingThe jars are filled with hot syrup, allowed to go cold, then closed with a paper round and a tied parchment cover. That produces no vacuum and no airtight barrier, and the filled jars are never heat-processed. Pineapple is acidic enough that botulism is not the leading concern, but mold and wild yeast are, and a dry cupboard will not stop them over weeks or months.
- Why it fails: the fruit is deliberately under-heatedThe slices are drawn off the fire "very hot, but not soft" and then set out on an open dish while the syrup reduces. Cooked-but-not-sterile fruit, handled at room temperature and repacked, is exactly the window in which surface spoilage organisms establish themselves. Use a current tested recipe for canned or preserved pineapple instead.
- Why it fails: the sugar and spirit are not preservative enoughWhy it fails: the sugar and spirit may not be preservative enough -- Three-quarters of a pound of sugar per pound of fruit sounds heavy, and the syrup is reduced before packing, but pineapple is roughly 85 percent water and juice from the slices will dilute the syrup in the jar. Combined with a half wineglass of rum, this may well fall short of the sugar concentration or alcohol strength that would reliably suppress growth on its own.
- Loaf sugarRefined cane sugar sold as a hard cone, broken and crushed for use. It was prized for purity rather than any special property; ordinary granulated sugar is its direct descendant.
- A wineglassfulPeriod cookbooks treat this as about two fluid ounces, or a quarter cup. It is one of the looser old measures — glasses varied — so it should be read as an approximation rather than a figure to convert precisely.
- "Rather a slow fire"A gentle heat, the equivalent of low on a modern burner, held so the syrup draws out of the sugar and the fruit warms through without breaking down. The overnight maceration is what makes that possible: the sugar has already pulled juice from the slices and formed its own syrup.
- The brandied paperA round of paper dipped in spirit and laid directly on the surface was a common household anti-mold measure before reliable jar closures. It was widespread enough to become traditional, which is not the same as working reliably.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the Waldorf kitchen at the turn of the twentieth century, when preserved pineapple still carried a whiff of luxury. Fresh pineapple had been a luxury fruit in Europe and North America for two centuries — grown at expense in heated pineries, and reportedly lent out as table centerpieces before being eaten — and imports of whole ripe fruit to northern cities grew through the later nineteenth century with steam shipping from the Caribbean, the Hawaiian trade developing around the turn of the century. A hotel that could buy fruit by the crate had every reason to put up the surplus in syrup and rum against the winter, and the sugar-overnight-then-simmer method here is much the same one applied to peaches, quinces and pears in the period. The paper cover dipped in spirit and the parchment tie belong to an older tradition than the screw-band glass jar, which was nonetheless already available by this date.