No. 3684

Preserved Pineapple

Ananas Confits

Pare some very ripe pineapples to the pulp, suppress the cores with a tin tube and cut them up into quarter-inch thick crosswise slices; throw them immediately into a panful of cold water, drain and put them into a basin of boiling water to blanch, refreshing afterward in a panful of cold water. Prepare a twelve-degree syrup, add to it the well-drained pineapple and boil up once. Now transfer to vessels to leave stand for twelve hours. At the end of this time drain off the syrup and pour it into a copper pan. Add a little sugar, boil to bring it to fourteen degrees, then add the pineapple; twelve hours later boil the syrup a little more, until it reaches sixteen degrees; pour it over the fruit and continue this same process until the syrup is at thirty degrees; when this takes place boil up several times, throw in the sliced pineapple and leave them for a few moments, then transfer the whole to jars; when cold close hermetically and keep in a cool, dry place.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is describing candied fruit by the classic French method: the pineapple sits in a syrup that is strengthened a little at a time so the fruit takes up sugar without collapsing. The whole thing runs about a week of twelve-hour rests, and the "degrees" are the only measurement given.

The degrees are BaumeThe degrees are almost certainly Baume -- the recipe names no scale, but nineteenth-century confectioners read syrup density on a Baume hydrometer (a saccharometer), and Ranhofer's kitchen was French-trained. Roughly: 12 degrees Baume is about 22 Brix, 14 about 26, 16 about 29, and the final 30 degrees is about 56 Brix, a heavy syrup though still below the density of a set jam. A cheap refractometer or hydrometer reading Brix will get you there; guessing will not.
Why the ladder mattersThis is the hinge of the recipe. If you drop blanched pineapple straight into a 30-degree syrup, water leaves the fruit faster than sugar enters and the slices shrivel and toughen. Raising the density two degrees at a time, with twelve hours of rest between, lets the exchange happen slowly and keeps the slices plump and translucent.
Tin tubeAn apple corer, or a plain round cutter. Core the peeled fruit whole, then cut the quarter-inch crosswise slices so each is a ring.
Copper panUnlined copper was standard for sugar work because it heats evenly and shows the boil clearly. Any wide heavy stainless or copper-clad pan does the same job; avoid unlined copper for anything acidic that will sit in it, and never store the syrup in it.
Blanch, then refreshThe recipe gives no time; a minute or two in boiling water is enough for quarter-inch slices, followed straight into cold water. Besides softening the flesh, the heat knocks back bromelain, the protein-digesting enzyme in raw pineapple.
Ripeness"Very ripe" is doing real work here. Underripe pineapple stays fibrous and woody no matter how long it candies. Look for fruit that is fragrant at the base and gives slightly when pressed.
Drain the syrup each timePour the syrup off the fruit, boil it up with added sugar to the next density, then pour it back hot over the slices. Through the middle stages the fruit is not boiled again, only bathed; at the end, though, the recipe boils the syrup up several times and returns the slices to it for a few moments.
Sealing and storageThe recipe fills the jars and closes them hermetically only once cold; that is not a modern canning process. At about 56 Brix this is a sweet preserve, not a shelf-stable canned good; treat it like an opened jam. Refrigerate, or follow a current tested water-bath procedure if you want it on a shelf.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its preserving chapter is written for a professional kitchen with a saccharometer on the shelf and a confectioner's stove to hand. Candying fruit in successively stronger syrups is far older than the book, a technique carried through French confiserie from the fruit-preserving traditions of Provence and Italy, where citron, apricots and angelica were treated the same way -- though grading the stages by hydrometer degrees is a later refinement. Pineapple in this position says something about the period: by the 1880s steamers were bringing fruit from Cuba, the Bahamas and Florida into New York, so the ananas shifted from a rarity on display to raw material for the preserving pan. Ranhofer files it between candied fruits generally and preserved quinces, treating it as one more item in the standard confectionery repertoire rather than a novelty.