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Pineapple Water
Boil one pound of loaf sugar and one pint of water to a syrup. Pour over one fresh pineapple cut in small pieces, and the strained juice of two lemons. Cover and let stand until quite cold. When ready to serve add one quart of ice water.
A steeped fruit syrup diluted at the last minute — the method is sound, and the only real decisions are how finely you cut the fruit and how long you leave it.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined cane sugar sold in a hard cone or block, broken up with nippers. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct replacement: one pound is about 2¼ cups.
- The syrupOne pound sugar to one pint water is roughly equal weights of sugar and water, a standard simple syrup, a little sweet by volume. Bring it just to a boil, stir until clear, and take it off — cooking it further starts you toward caramel and colours the drink.
- Cut the pineapple smallThe syrup extracts by contact, not by cooking, so surface area is everything. Peel, core and dice fine, or grate the flesh on the coarse side of a box grater and include the juice that runs out.
- Steeping time"Until quite cold" means several hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator. Rushing it in an ice bath gives you sweet water with the pineapple flavour still locked in the fruit.
- Strain or don'tThe recipe leaves this open. Strain through a fine sieve for a clear beverage of the period; leave the fruit in if you want something closer to a punch, and press the pulp to recover the syrup it holds.
- Fresh matters hereCanned pineapple has been heat-treated and will taste flat and tinny by comparison. If you use it, taste before sweetening and cut the added sugar when it is packed in syrup.
- YieldCloser to two quarts once the ice water goes in — six to eight glasses. It is sweet by modern habit; hold back part of the syrup and add it to taste after diluting.
Fruit waters of this kind were a staple of American beverage books, and their purpose was practical: to show that a hostess, a soda fountain or a club could set a table without wine or spirits, and they did it largely with fruit syrups, sweetened waters and iced infusions of the kind here. Pineapple had by then become far more available than the hothouse luxury of the eighteenth century, and the technique of pouring hot syrup over cut fruit to draw out flavour was already standard in the making of shrubs and cordials, minus the brandy that once preserved them.