Home › Menu IX › Pineapple Smash
Pineapple Smash
Boil together for 10 minutes 2 cups water and 1 cup sugar. Add 1 pint can grated pineapple and Juice of 3 lemons. To 1 cup of mixture add 1/2 cup ice water and freeze until firm. Cool remainder and strain over block of ice. Add just before serving 1 1/2 pints ginger ale and serve in tall glasses with a Ball of the pineapple sherbet in each glass. Garnish with sprigs of Mint and Maraschino cherries.
A two-part drink: a lemon-pineapple syrup thinned with ginger ale, served over a scoop of sherbet made from the same base. The proportions are built for a punch bowl and an ice block, so a little translation helps.
- The sherbet portion is undersizedOnly 1 cup of the base plus 1/2 cup water goes into the freezer, which will not stretch far once each glass takes a ball. If you are serving six or eight glasses, set aside two or three cups of the base and increase the added water proportionally.
- Still-freezing means stirringThere is no churn here, so the mixture will set as a solid block unless you break up the crystals. Freeze in a shallow pan and stir with a fork every 30 minutes for two to three hours; then it can be pressed into rough balls with a scoop.
- The pint canA pint is 2 cups. Modern crushed pineapple comes in 8 oz and 20 oz cans; a 20 oz can, undrained, is the closest match. Buy it packed in juice rather than heavy syrup, since the recipe already carries a full cup of sugar.
- Juice of 3 lemonsRoughly 1/2 cup, though lemon size varies a good deal. Measure rather than count, and hold back a tablespoon or two if the pineapple is unusually sweet.
- Boiling the syrupTen minutes at a full boil will reduce the 2 cups of water somewhat and leave a light syrup. Keep an eye on it so it does not reduce further than that.
- The block of iceThis assumes a punch bowl with a single large block, which dilutes slowly and lets the strained base chill without watering down. A large freezer-container block or a few oversized cubes serve the same purpose; loose cracked ice will thin the drink.
- Ginger ale timing1½ pints is 3 cups. Add it at the table, not in the kitchen, and pour down the side of the bowl to keep the carbonation.
- YieldAbout 6 to 7 cups of finished drink, or six tall glasses once the sherbet takes up room. Garnish goes on last, after the scoop is in the glass.
A "smash" was originally a short bar drink of spirit, sugar, and bruised mint, close kin to the julep, and the name was later borrowed by nonalcoholic entertaining. Books of luncheon and supper menus are full of these constructions: a fruit syrup, ginger ale for the fizz that a spirit would once have supplied, and the full ceremonial garnish of mint sprig and maraschino cherry so the glass still looked like a cocktail. Canned grated pineapple made the recipe possible at all outside pineapple country, and the pairing of a scoop of ice with a carbonated drink was a favorite trick, borrowed straight from the soda fountain and carried into the home punch bowl.