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Pine-Apple Ice-Cream
Three pints cream, two large ripe pine-apples, two pounds powdered sugar; slice the pine-apples thin, scatter the sugar between the slices, cover and let the fruit stand three hours, cut or chop it up in the syrup, and strain through a hair-sieve or double bag of coarse lace; beat gradually into the cream, and freeze as rapidly as possible; reserve a few pieces of pine-apple unsugared, cut into square bits, and stir through cream when half frozen, first a pint of well-whipped cream, and then the fruit. Peach ice-cream may be made in the same way. -Mrs. L. M. T.,
A Philadelphia-style ice cream — no eggs, no cooking, just sweetened fruit juice beaten into raw cream. The whole thing turns on speed of freezing and on what fresh pineapple does to dairy.
- The hinge: fresh pineapple attacks the creamThe hinge: fresh pineapple and cream -- Raw pineapple contains bromelain, a protease that acts on milk proteins; pineapple-and-dairy mixtures are prone to thinning and to a bitter edge if left to stand. "Freeze as rapidly as possible" is the standard ice-cream instruction of the period rather than a stated remedy for this, though cold does slow the enzyme. If you want insurance, bring the strained syrup to a simmer for two minutes and chill it hard before it meets the cream.
- QuantitiesThree pints is 6 cups of heavy cream. The pint (2 cups) of whipped cream stirred in later reads as additional, which would make 8 cups in all, though the text does not say so outright and it may be meant to come from the three pints. Two large ripe pineapples means roughly 6-8 lb of whole fruit.
- Two pounds of sugarThat is about 4½ cups of powdered sugar, far sweeter than modern palates expect. Much of it is doing structural work — sugar keeps a hand-churned ice cream soft — but 2½ to 3 cups is closer to current taste in a machine-frozen batch. Note that 19th-century "powdered sugar" is finely ground granulated, not today's cornstarch-blended confectioners' sugar; either dissolves in the maceration.
- Hair sieve or lace bagA horsehair sieve was the fine strainer of the period. A nylon mesh sieve or a double layer of cheesecloth does the same job: you want the juice and syrup, not the fibrous pulp.
- Freezing"Freeze as rapidly as possible" assumed a hand-crank freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt. In a modern machine, chill the base thoroughly first and churn in two batches if your canister holds less than 1½ quarts.
- Order of additionsAt the half-frozen stage the whipped cream goes in first, then the reserved unsugared pineapple cubes. Folding the whipped cream in lightens a base that would otherwise freeze dense; adding the fruit last keeps the pieces distinct.
- YieldClose to a gallon. Scale by quarters for a household batch.
- The peach variationPeaches have no bromelain, so the substitution is straightforward, but they oxidize; work quickly and keep the sliced fruit under its sugar.
Uncooked ice creams like this one — cream, sugar, fruit, nothing else — came to be known as Philadelphia-style, a term that seems to have become common only toward the end of the 19th century, in contrast to the egg-thickened French custard bases. What dates the recipe is the pineapple itself: by the 1880s, when The Dixie Cook Book was circulating, whole fresh pineapples had become a reachable luxury in Southern and Gulf cities, and the commercial ice trade had put freezing within reach of a well-off household in summer. The three-hour maceration under sugar is the older technique for drawing juice from fruit without heat, and the hair sieve it is strained through was standard equipment before wire mesh became cheap. The attribution to "Mrs. L. M. T." is typical of the book, which was assembled largely from contributed receipts.