No. 3090

Pineapple, Carolina and with Rice with Cream

Ananas Caroline et Ananas au Riz a la Creme

Peel a pineapple neatly; remove the core with a column tube and split it lengthwise in two. Cut one of these halves into very small thin bands, each one being an inch and a quarter long by half an inch wide, and cut the other half into even slices an eighth of an inch thick. Put the sliced pineapple into a vessel and cover it with a cold twenty-five degree syrup, and three hours later drain off this syrup to add to it a little sugar melted in a small quantity of water, and cook it again to thirty-two degrees. Let it get cold, then flavor with a little maraschino; pour it once more over the pineapple. Two hours after drain the small bands on a cloth and wipe them carefully. Butter twelve small timbale molds (No. 1, Fig. 137), cover the bottoms with a ring cut from angelica and place a candied cherry in the center; decorate the sides with the pineapple bands overlapping each other, and fill the timbales as far as the top with rice and cream (No. 160), flavored with vanilla and finished with a few egg-yolks. Keep these timbales in a bain-marie for thirty-five minutes. Place the even slices of pineapple to drain, wipe dry and cover with a light layer of apricot marmalade (No. 3675) flavored with kirsch. Dress the unmolded timbales in the center of a round dish and range the pineapple in slices around, one overlapping the other; bestrew with finely chopped pistachios and decorate with angelica lozenges and candied cherries. Set the dish in the oven for a few moments to heat the whole and serve with the syrup used to steep the pineapple, flavored with maraschino and then strained through a fine wire sieve into a sauce-boat.

Pineapple with Rice with Cream.—Have some rice with cream (No. 160) flavored with orange, dress it in the center of a dish and garnish around it with slices of pineapple a quarter of an inch thick, four inches in diameter and cut in four, having prepared them as follows: Place them in a copper basin and throw over them a thirty degree syrup and allow to infuse for an hour; drain. Pound the parings and mix them with the syrup in which the pineapples were infused; pass through a sieve and serve as a sauce.

← No. 3089 Mince Pie Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3091 Poupelin →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a hydrometer and a numbered set of molds, but the dish is two simple things: rice pudding baked in lined dariole molds, and pineapple candied in syrup. Read the syrup degrees first, since everything else follows from them.

The syrup degreesThese are degrees Baumé, read with a saccharometer, not oven or Fahrenheit readings. Roughly: 25° is about 46-47 percent sugar by weight (near equal weights sugar and water), 30° about 55 percent (about 1.2 parts sugar to 1 water), 32° about 59 percent (about 1.4 parts sugar to 1 water). Any pastry hydrometer or a refractometer will get you there more reliably than guessing.
Why the syrup is stepped upThe point of draining, re-boiling to a denser syrup and re-covering is osmotic: the fruit is candied gradually so it stays translucent and firm instead of collapsing. Skipping straight to the heavy syrup shrivels the bands and they will not bend around the mold.
The moldsRanhofer's "small timbale molds" (his No. 1, Fig. 137) are of the dariole type, small individual molds; the book gives no capacity. Butter them well and line them cold; the pineapple bands must be blotted genuinely dry or they slide down the sides as you fill.
Rice with cream (No. 160)That reference is a rice pudding: rice cooked slowly in sweetened milk until it has absorbed nearly everything, then enriched. Here it is flavored with vanilla and finished with egg yolks, which is what allows the timbales to set and unmold.
Bain-marie, thirty-five minutesThis is a water bath with the water kept below a simmer; the book gives no temperature. The custard is set when a knife comes out clean at the center; hard boiling in the bath curdles the yolks and the timbales weep when turned out.
BromelainFresh pineapple's enzyme attacks proteins and can turn dairy bitter. Here the bands are only steeped in cold syrup, but the thirty-five minutes in the bain-marie denatures the enzyme. Canned pineapple is already heat-treated and inert, and is a legitimate shortcut for the sliced garnish.
Angelica and candied cherriesCandied angelica stem is now a specialty item; candied citron or a green candied peel gives the same lozenge for the decoration. Use real candied cherries rather than cocktail maraschino cherries, which are too wet.
Maraschino and kirschMaraschino here means the dry Dalmatian cherry-pit liqueur, not the sweet red syrup sold under that name today. Add it to the syrup off the heat so the aroma survives.
YieldTwelve timbales, so twelve servings; one pineapple, split, supplies both the lining bands and the ringed slices. The reserved steeping syrup, strained and flavored, is the sauce.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked during three decades at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry pairs a showpiece and a plain version of the same idea: the lined and unmolded ananas Caroline for a formal service, and pineapple with orange-scented riz à la crème for a simpler one. The decoration here — angelica rings, candied cherries, chopped pistachios — is standard nineteenth-century French pastry vocabulary carried into an American dining room. Pineapple was the interesting part: by the 1890s steamers were bringing Caribbean and Florida fruit to New York in quantity, so a restaurant could afford to spend half a pineapple on decorative bands and throw the parings into the sauce. The syrup degrees marked in Baumé, meanwhile, show how much confectionery work of the period depended on the hydrometer.