No. 3606

Pineapple Water Ice

Glace a l'Eau a l'Ananas

Pineapple can be prepared in two ways, either grated or pounded in a mortar or infused in a syrup.

Infused in Syrup.-Boil a quart of thirty-two degree syrup, add to it one pound of peeled pineapple cut in thin slices, also the peel of one orange; remove from the fire, cover the saucepan, and leave to cool in the syrup, adding one gill or the juice of three lemons; strain forcibly, either through a Venice sieve or a silken one; boil the mixture until it reaches twenty degrees of the syrup gauge and freeze.

Another way is to place a pound of sugar in a vessel with two quarts of water and one quart of grated or crushed pineapple; let infuse for two hours; add a leaf and a half of isinglass dissolved in half a pint of water acidulated with the juice of eight lemons or else melted citric acid; strain through a fine sieve and freeze.

Another Way.-One quart of grated pineapple, two pounds of sugar, two quarts of water, the juice of sixteen lemons or five gills. Finish the same as water ice (No. 3601).

← No. 3605 Orange Water Ice or with Gelatine Molded Ices & Large Pieces No. 3607 Strawberry or Raspberry Water Ice →

For the Modern Kitchen

Three versions of the same ice, all built on the sugar-density practice of a professional nineteenth-century pastry kitchen. Read the Baumé numbers first, because everything else follows from them.

Degrees of syrupThe "thirty-two degree" and "twenty degree" readings are Baume, taken with the syrup gauge (saccharometer) the recipe names. Twenty degrees is a common density for a water ice, in the region of 35 percent sugar by weight. Sweetness is not just flavour here: it controls how hard the ice freezes.
Getting the density without a hydrometerIf you have no Baumé scale, a refractometer or digital Brix meter reads the same thing (20° Baumé is near 36 Brix). Failing that, work by the third version, which gives straight weights: 2 lb sugar to 2 quarts water plus a quart of fruit and the lemon juice.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So "the juice of sixteen lemons or five gills" is about 2½ cups of lemon juice for the third formula, a genuinely sharp ice.
Isinglass and fresh pineappleIsinglass is a collagen setting agent from sturgeon swim bladders, long replaced by leaf or powdered gelatine. The catch in the second version is that raw pineapple contains bromelain, which digests gelatine and will leave the mixture slack. The infused-in-syrup method avoids this because the fruit is heated; if you use gelatine with uncooked pulp, the pulp must be scalded first, or canned pineapple used.
Why the gelatine is there at allA leaf and a half in this volume is a trace, not a jelly. It is body, added to keep a water ice from freezing into shards. Modern practice uses a little glucose, invert sugar or a pinch of stabiliser for the same end.
Venice and silk sievesA Venice sieve is generally described as a very fine sieve, of hair or of silk; the silken one named here would be at least as fine. A fine chinois or a nylon sieve gives the same clarity. Straining "forcibly" means pressing the pulp to extract the juice rather than letting it drip.
FreezingAn ice-cream machine handles this directly; churn until it holds a soft ribbon, then firm it in the freezer for a few hours. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow tray and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for the granita texture, which suits a water ice well.
Melted citric acid"Melted citric acid" most likely means citric acid crystals dissolved in a little warm water. It stands in for lemon juice when a cleaner, less aromatic acidity is wanted; add it by taste.
YieldThe second and third versions each make somewhere in the region of three to four quarts of mixture before freezing, enough for a large mould or a dozen or more servings. The syrup-infusion version is much smaller, on the order of a quart.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the ice-making practice of Delmonico's in New York, where water ices were not a simple dessert but structural material: they were packed into moulds, frozen hard in ice and salt, and turned out as fruits, baskets and architectural set pieces, which is why this recipe sits under "Molded Ices & Large Pieces." The reliance on a syrup gauge marks it as professional work rather than domestic, because a batch destined to hold the shape of a moulded pineapple for an hour on a dining table had to freeze predictably. Pineapple itself was long associated with hospitality and display, which made it a natural subject for the kind of showpiece ice that was meant to be looked at before it was eaten.