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Pineapple Frappe
2 cups water 1 cup sugar Juice of 3 lemons 2 cups ice-water 1 can grated pineapple 1 pineapple shredded Make a syrup by boiling the water and sugar together fifteen minutes. Add the pineapple and lemon juice. Cool, strain, add ice water, and freeze to a mush, using equal parts salt and ice. If fresh fruit is used, more sugar will be required.
A hand-cranked water ice from the era when canned pineapple had just become a pantry staple. Two things need attention: the vague can size and the unusually salty ice bath.
- The hinge: freeze it coarseA frappé is deliberately stopped at the slushy stage, not churned smooth like a sorbet. Pull it while it still slumps off the spoon; if it sets hard, break it up with a fork before serving.
- Equal parts salt and iceThat ratio is much saltier than the 1:3 or 1:4 used for ice cream, and it is intentional — it drives the brine well below freezing so the mixture seizes fast into fine crystals. In a modern machine or a freezer tray, scrape and stir every 20 minutes instead.
- "1 can grated pineapple"Genuinely ambiguous. Period can sizes for pineapple varied; a can of roughly 16 to 20 oz, juice and all, is a reasonable reading. Taste the syrup before freezing, since cold mutes sweetness noticeably.
- Both canned and freshThe ingredient list calls for a can of grated pineapple and a shredded fresh one — the fresh fruit carries the perfume, the can carries the sugar and juice. If you use fresh only, the closing line applies: add sugar to taste.
- Boiling fifteen minutesTwo cups water with one cup sugar will lose a good deal of volume over a quarter hour of hard boiling. Keep it at a bare simmer, or top the syrup back up to about 2 cups with water so the final mixture is not overly dense.
- StrainingStraining is what the recipe calls for, and it gives a clearer, granita-like frappé. Leaving the pulp in is not wrong, but it produces something closer to a sorbet and needs more stirring during freezing.
- LemonsThree period lemons are roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup juice. Start at 1/3 cup, since modern lemons are often larger and the acid can overwhelm the pineapple.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, or eight small glasses. Serve in stemmed glasses immediately after freezing; frappé does not hold well.
Frapp orm for for struck or iced, and by the 1890s it had settled in American usage to mean a fruit syrup frozen only to a mush \and in a glass in a glass rather than a dish, and said to be passed between courses at a long dinner.