No. 3693

Stewed Pineapple

Compote d'Ananas

Pare neatly a fine pineapple; remove the core with a tin tube; split lengthwise in two, and cut each half in crosswise slices three-sixteenths of an inch thick. Arrange these in a vessel, and pour over some boiling thirty-two degree syrup, leaving them to marinate for two hours, then dress in a circle on a compote dish and cover with their own syrup.

← No. 3692 Stewed Pears Preserves & Conserves No. 3694 Stewed Prunes →

For the Modern Kitchen

A two-ingredient dish that lives or dies on the syrup density and the cut. Ranhofer's only real instruction is the syrup, and it is given in a unit no modern cook owns a tool for.

Thirty-two degree syrupThat is 32° on the Baumé scale, the confectioner's hydrometer reading, not a temperature. It corresponds to a heavy syrup in the region of 60 percent sugar by weight: about 2 cups granulated sugar dissolved in 1 1/4 cups water, brought to a boil, will come close.
Pour it boilingThe syrup must go over the fruit hot. It is the only heat the pineapple gets, and it both draws juice out and drives sugar in. Cold syrup will simply sit there and the fruit will stay raw and watery.
A tin tubeA metal cylinder for punching out the fibrous core, the ancestor of the modern pineapple corer. An apple corer works on a small fruit; otherwise cut the halves and pare the core out with a knife before slicing.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm. Thin enough that the hot syrup penetrates in two hours, thick enough that the half-moons hold their shape when dressed in a circle.
Choosing the fruitNothing here cooks off underripe acidity or a woody centre, so the pineapple has to be ripe and fragrant at the base. Ranhofer's "fine pineapple" is doing real work.
BromelainRaw pineapple's enzyme will not set with gelatin and will make dairy taste bitter if the compote sits in cream. The brief scald from boiling syrup does not fully deactivate it, so serve it alongside custard or cream rather than mixed in.
A compote dishA shallow footed glass or silver dish. Any wide, low bowl serves; the point is that the slices are arranged in a single overlapping ring and the syrup pooled around them, not heaped.
Yield and timingOne pineapple gives roughly half a dozen modest servings. The two-hour marinade can be done at room temperature; if it is held longer it should go in the refrigerator.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the period's confectionery in miniature: a syrup specified by hydrometer degree, because a professional pastry kitchen would have owned a Baumé saccharometer and many of the book's sugar operations are keyed to it. Pineapple had become markedly more available in Ranhofer's lifetime, the fast steamer trade landing fruit in eastern American ports in quantity from the Caribbean, so it could appear as a plain stewed compote rather than a centrepiece. Pouring boiling syrup over raw fruit and letting it stand, instead of simmering the fruit in the pan, is a standard French compote handling for fruit that would otherwise collapse, and it is what separates this from the stewed pears and prunes on either side of it in the section.