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Pineapple Champagne
For this the parings alone may be used or in conjunction with the chopped fruit, allowing to and pouring over the parings of one small pine a pint of boiling water. After letting it steep till cold sweeten to taste, then strain and bottle, fastening corks very tight. If kept in warm place (bottles on the side) it should be ready in twenty-four hours. When ripe cool the bottles in ice water.
This is a wild-fermented pineapple drink — closer to Mexican tepache than to anything from Champagne — and it works because the yeasts living on the fruit skin do all the labor. Two things need attention: the sugar, which the original leaves entirely to taste, and the pressure, which builds fast in a warm room.
- The hinge: pressureSugar plus wild yeast plus a tightly corked bottle in a warm place produces real carbonation within a day, and glass bottles with wired or wedged corks can burst. Ferment in a plastic soda bottle, or in a swing-top bottle you open briefly once or twice a day to release gas, and keep it away from where anyone sits.
- "One small pine"Use the parings of one small pineapple per pint (2 cups) of boiling water, unwashed skin included; the recipe allows the chopped fruit to be added as well.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given because the recipe assumes a cook tasting as she goes. About 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar per pint gives a lightly sweet drink with enough left over to carbonate; more sugar means more gas, and correspondingly more pressure.
- Steep till coldThe boiling water extracts flavor from the parings, and cooling matters before you bottle: liquid still hot will not ferment. Let it come down to room temperature, roughly 2 to 3 hours.
- Twenty-four hours is a warm-room figureAt 75-80F the drink will be fizzy in a day. In a 65F kitchen expect two to three days. Judge by the hiss when you open it rather than the clock.
- "When ripe"Ripe here means fermented and lively, not fruit-ripe. Once it tastes tart and carbonated, chill it hard — cold slows the yeast almost to a stop and keeps pressure from climbing further. Drink within a few days; this is not a keeping bottle.
- AlcoholA one-day ferment is likely to be low in alcohol, broadly in the kombucha range. Left a week in a warm place at higher sugar it will climb further.
- YieldA pint of water yields a pint of drink, about two glasses. Scale up freely; the ratio of one small pineapple's parings to a pint of water is the part to keep.
Nineteenth-century cookbooks are full of "champagnes" that had nothing to do with Champagne — rhubarb champagne, ginger champagne — the word borrowed simply to mean a homemade drink that fizzed. This one belongs to a wider family of thrift recipes built on fruit trimmings, and its logic is the same as that of Mexican tepache, in which pineapple rind and sugar are left to ferment on wild yeast: the flavorful part of a pineapple skin is discarded in cutting, so the household drink is made from what would otherwise go to waste. Imported pineapple reached northern cities by steamship and rail, but remained expensive enough that a cook would think twice before throwing the parings away.