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Strawberry-And-Pineapple Cocktail
1 cup orange-juice 1/3 cup lemon-juice 1 cup diced pineapple Sugar 1 cup strawberries Combine the orange-and lemon-juice sweetened to taste, keeping the mixture rather tart. Place on ice. Wash and drain the strawberries and hull them. At serving time cut the berries into halves (except six large ones), mix them with the pineapple, place in glasses and cover with the fruit-juice. One large, perfect berry set on a tiny circle of pineapple may decorate the top of each cocktail.
A fruit cup served as a first course, from the era when "cocktail" at table often meant no alcohol at all. It needs no cooking, only cold ingredients and attention to sweetness.
- YieldThe garnish instruction (six large berries reserved) tells you it is built for six small glasses. As written each serving is roughly a third of a cup of fruit with juice over it — a deliberately small opener, not a dessert portion.
- Keep it tartThis is the hinge. Sweeten the citrus only until the sourness stops being aggressive; the pineapple and berries bring their own sugar, and an over-sweet base makes the whole thing taste like canned fruit salad. Start with a tablespoon of sugar in the mixed juices and taste.
- PineappleThe recipe does not specify fresh or canned. Canned pineapple in juice works but is markedly sweeter, so cut the added sugar back to nearly nothing.
- "Place on ice"This means chill the sweetened juice until very cold, an hour or so; in 1929 that meant the icebox or a bowl of ice.
- Assemble at the last minuteCut berries bleed and go slack quickly. The recipe has you wash, drain and hull the berries ahead, but halve them only at serving time, as directed.
- GlassesThe recipe says only to place the fruit in glasses; any small stemmed glass gives the effect. Chill them first.
- JuiceA cup of orange juice is about three medium oranges, and a third of a cup of lemon juice about two lemons. Bottled juice will read flat against fresh fruit.