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Pineapple and Ginger Ale
Mix one grated fresh pineapple with one cup of sugar and put on ice until ready to serve. Then add the juice of two lemons, a bottle of ginger ale, and a pint of Apollinaris. This is sufficient for four people. Pineapple Punch No. 1 Mix the juice of three lemons with two quarts of pineapple juice and a pound of sugar. Chill, and when ready to serve, pour over ice in the punch bowl, and add two bottles of ginger ale. Decorate with pieces of pineapple. Pineapple Punch No. 2 Boil two cups of chopped pineapple and two cups of sugar with one quart of cold water for twenty minutes. Add one cup of orange juice and one half cup of lemon juice. Cool, strain, and add ice water or Apollinaris.
Three related pineapple coolers from a temperance drink book, written when bottled mineral water and ginger ale were the standard non-alcoholic mixers. The measurements are sound; the main adjustments are bottle sizes, sweetness, and what to pour in place of Apollinaris.
- ApollinarisA naturally carbonated German mineral water, heavily marketed in the English-speaking world as "the Queen of Table Waters." It is still produced but rarely stocked in the US; any dry, well-carbonated sparkling mineral water stands in, and a pint is two cups.
- A bottle of ginger alePeriod ginger ale was sold in small bottles, splits and pints, somewhere in the region of 6 to 12 fluid ounces. Read "a bottle" as about 12 oz and "two bottles" as about 24 oz, adjusting to taste.
- Sugar, and the ginger ale problemModern ginger ale is probably sweeter and less gingery than the bottlings of 1919. Cut the sugar by a third to start and correct at the end, since the pineapple's own sweetness varies enormously.
- Grating a fresh pineappleCore it first, then grate on the coarse side of a box grater over a bowl to catch every drop of juice. The pulp is meant to stay in the drink in the first recipe, which is why it sits on ice with the sugar until serving time to draw the juice out.
- Pineapple juice for Punch No. 1Two quarts is more than you will squeeze from fresh fruit without effort; unsweetened canned or bottled juice is the practical choice today. If you use juice from concentrate, taste before adding the full pound of sugar.
- The twenty-minute boilIn Punch No. 2 the boil is doing two jobs, making a syrup and extracting flavour from the chopped fruit. Add the orange and lemon juice only after it comes off the heat, as the recipe says; boiled citrus juice turns flat and slightly bitter.
- StrainingPunch No. 2 is strained, so press the cooked pulp firmly against the sieve rather than discarding it wet. A second pass through a fine strainer gives a clear punch that holds its sparkle better.
- YieldThe first recipe states four servings. Punch No. 1 makes roughly three quarts before ice; Punch No. 2 makes something under two quarts of base, again before dilution.
- Ice and dilutionChill everything separately and combine at the table. A single large block of ice in the punch bowl melts far more slowly than cubes and keeps the drink from going watery over an evening.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the small flurry of alcohol-free drink books published around the arrival of national Prohibition in 1920 — the title plays on the phrase "on the water wagon," American slang from the turn of the century for someone who has sworn off drink. Books like this one had to fill a punch bowl without wine or spirits, and they leaned on two things that were newly abundant: commercially bottled ginger ale, and pineapple. Hawaiian canneries had expanded rapidly in the 1900s and 1910s, putting the canned fruit within reach of mainland households year round, so a punch that would once have been an extravagance became an obvious centrepiece. Apollinaris water, imported from the Ahr valley in Germany, had been a fashionable table water since the nineteenth century and appears constantly in period drink books; its presence here, alongside ginger ale, is a reminder that the mixer trade was well established long before it had to carry a party on its own.