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De Menthe Pineapple Sundae
Pour crême de menthe pineapple over ice cream in a sundae dish.
A one-line fountain formula that assumes you already have a jar of the dressing on the back bar. Everything hinges on what "crême de menthe pineapple" means: a fountain preparation, not the liqueur.
- The topping itselfAt the soda fountain, "crème de menthe pineapple" would have been a fruit dressing rather than the cordial: crushed or diced pineapple in a heavy sweet syrup, mint-flavored and most likely tinted green, non-alcoholic so it could be sold across the counter. For something like the period effect, warm a cup of drained crushed pineapple with a cup of simple syrup, a few drops of peppermint extract and green coloring, then cool and hold cold.
- If you use the liqueur insteadActual crème de menthe over pineapple works, but it is a different drink-adjacent dessert: sweeter, sharper, and alcoholic. Pour it as a small float of about half an ounce rather than the fuller ladle a fountain syrup would get.
- PortionThe original gives no measure because the fountain worked in ladles and dippers. Something on the order of a couple of ounces of dressing over one or two scoops of ice cream is the right scale; a No. 16 dipper holds about 2 fl oz, so two scoops come to roughly half a cup.
- The ice creamVanilla was the fountain's default base and suits this best; the mint and pineapple are the point, and anything more assertive underneath muddies both.
- Temperature disciplineThe syrup should be thoroughly cold before it touches the ice cream; a room-temperature dressing melts the scoop fast.
- The dishA "sundae dish" is the footed tulip or shallow stemmed glass, about 5 to 6 oz. A chilled coupe or small wine glass stands in perfectly well.
- YieldOne serving. Scale by the ladle.
Sundaes multiplied at the American fountain in the decades around 1900, and the trade's inventiveness ran mostly to the topping: a base of vanilla plus a named dressing produced dozens of menu items from a very short list of ingredients. Names borrowed from the bar were part of the appeal — "crème de menthe," "maraschino," "claret" — since a dispenser could sell the glamour of a cordial with none of the license, tax or temperance trouble attached to the real thing. The fruit-in-tinted-syrup formula behind this one is the same technology that gave us the modern maraschino cherry, which is likewise a bleached, re-dyed, re-flavored imitation of an alcoholic original. Fountain manuals of the period, of which this book is one, exist to give the soda clerk a working inventory of such dressings and the two-line combinations that turn them into menu listings.