Mrs Beeton and pine-apple: Episode 2

The Best of Mrs Beeton’s Easy Entertaining, updated in 2007 London

"The Best of Mrs Beeton's Easy Entertaining contains a selection of reliable, delicious recipes, fully updated, that will encourage beginners, while inspiring those who are practised cooks." The Editors.

Desserts: Pineapple Buttermilk Whip

400ml/14 fl oz unsweetened pineapple or orange juice; 15ml/1 tblsp gelatine; 150ml/¼ pint buttermilk

Place 60ml/4 tblsp of the fruit juice in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatine on to the liquid. Set aside for 15 minutes until the gelatine is spongy. Stand the bowl over a saucepan of hot water and stir continuously the gelatine until it has dissolved completely.

Combine the gelatine mixture with the remaining fruit juice. Pour a little of the mixture into each of 4 stemmed glasses.

Chill the rest of the mixture for about 1 hour. When it is on the point of setting, whisk in the buttermilk until frothy. Spoon into the glasses and chill.

Desserts: Pineapple and Kirsch Salad

2 small pineapples; 100g / 4 oz black grapes; 1 banana; 1 pear; 15ml / 1 tblsp lemon juice; 30 – 45 / 2 – 3 tblsp kirsch; sugar

Cut the pineapples in half lengthways. Cut out the core from each, then scoop out the flesh, using first a knife, then a spoon, but taking care to keep the pineapple shells intact. Discard the core, and working over a bowl to catch the juice, chop the flesh.

Add the pineapple flesh to the bowl. Halve the grapes and remove the pips. Add to the pineapple mixture. Peel and slice the banana; peel, core, and slice the pear. Put the lemon juice in a shallow bowl, add the pear and banana slices and toss both fruits before adding to the pineapple and grapes.

Mix all the fruit together, pout the kirsch over and sweeten to taste with the sugar. Pile the fruit back into the pineapple shells and chill until required.

Serves four.

And for an anachronistic touch I thought I'd go with a Pacific look!! Anne

Mrs Beeton and pine-apple: Episode 1

Mrs Beeton’s Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book UK 1893, reprint 2011

Pine-apple Ice Cream

Ingredients for ices for 8 persons: ¼ lb of tinned pine; the juice of a small lemon; 1 pint of cream; 1/2 pint of milk; ¼ lb of white sugar

Average cost, 2s

Cut the pine into dice, bruise it in a mortar, then add the lemon-juice, sugar, cream and milk. Mix them thoroughly, press through a hair-sieve and freeze.

Time: 25 minutes to freeze the ice.

Seasonable at any time.

From an original 1893 Mrs Beeton's:

"Young girls generally enjoy a morning in the kitchen devoted to the task of making pretty dishes; and might we suggest that their culinary education should not end with these. It is far more important to know how to boil a potato, to roast a joint, or to fry fish, than to be able to clear a jelly or decorate a cream; yet many girls will not try to learn the homely useful division of cookery." Mrs Beeton

Who was Mrs Beeton?

Well according to http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beeton_mrs.shtml

"Beeton was a Victorian writer whose 'Book of Household Management' is one of the most famous cookery books ever published.

Isabella Mayson was born on 12 March 1836 in London. She was educated in Germany. In 1856, she married Samuel Beeton, a wealthy publisher and began to write articles on cooking and household management for her husband's publications.

In 1861, the first instalment of her famous 'The Book of Household Management' was published. It was an immediate success, selling over 60,000 copies in its first year of publication and nearly two million by 1868. As well as recipes the book contained advice regarding household management, childcare, etiquette, entertaining and the employment of servants. It was illustrated with coloured engravings on nearly every page and was the first to format recipes in the layout still used today.
Beeton died on 6 February 1865 (aged 28!) of an infection following the birth of her fourth child."

By Maull & Polyblank - National Portrait Gallery, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45334839

And here,  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815233, I discovered a television movie "The Secret Life of Mrs Beeton" 2006 which I'll have to track down! Anne