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Pine-Apple Pudding
Butter a pudding-dish, and line the bottom and sides with slices of stale cake (sponge-cake is best), pare and slice thin a large pineapple, place in the dish first a layer of pine-apple, then strew with 1 sugar, then more pine-apple, and so on until all is used, pour over a small tea-cup water, and cover with slices of cake which have been dipped in cold water; cover the whole with a buttered plate, and bake slowly for two hours. - Mrs. Wm. Smith, Jacksonville, Fla.
A cake-lined fruit pudding of the charlotte type, built in layers and baked under cover so the pineapple steams rather than browns. Two details in the original need interpretation before you start.
- The missing sugar quantity"Strew with 1 sugar" is a printer's slip — a fraction or a word has dropped out. Fresh pineapple of this size takes roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of granulated sugar total, divided among the layers; taste the fruit first and lean higher if it is sharp.
- Bake slowly"Slow" in nineteenth-century recipes is usually reckoned at somewhere around 275-300F. Two hours at that heat is what softens the pineapple and lets the cake absorb the syrup without the top drying out.
- A small tea-cup of waterTeacup measures varied a good deal in period books; a small one is usually taken as about 1/2 cup. That is all the added liquid the dish gets; the pineapple releases plenty more as it heats.
- Covered, not openThe buttered plate laid over the top is the working part of the method — it traps steam. A tight lid or foil buttered on the underside does the same job. Uncovered, the top layer of cake bakes to a crust and the fruit scorches at the edges.
- Preparing the pineapplePare deeply enough to remove the fibrous eyes, and cut out the hard core; core left in stays woody through two hours of baking. Slices about 1/4 inch thick are right.
- If you use canned pineappleDrain it well and omit the added water entirely — canned fruit in juice or syrup carries more liquid than the recipe expects, and the cake will collapse into paste.
- The cakeStale sponge or plain pound cake, cut about 1/2 inch thick. Fresh cake is too tender and disintegrates; the water-dipped top slices are meant to be firm enough to hold their shape.
- Yield and servingA large pineapple suits a dish of about 2 quarts and should serve six to eight. Let it stand 20 minutes before serving so the syrup thickens, and serve with cream or a sweet pudding sauce.
Cake-lined fruit puddings like this one are often compared to the English charlotte, in which stale bread or sponge is used to case a dish of stewed fruit erm up past its best that appears throughout nineteenth-century American household books. What dates this particular version is the pineapple. Fresh pineapple reached northern markets by fast sailing and steam vessels from Cuba and the Bahamas from the mid-nineteenth century, while Florida plantings along the Indian River and in the Keys were only just becoming commercially significant when The Dixie Cook Book was compiled in the early 1880s. That the contributor writes from Jacksonville may be to the point.