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Honolulu Punch
Into soda glass draw ½ ounce each of pineapple and strawberry syrup, 2 ounces claret wine and a spoonful shaved ice. Fill glass with solid soda; stir. Top with maraschino cherry and sprig of fresh mint. "Horse's Neck."
A fountain drink rather than a bar drink: the wine here is a flavouring in a glass mostly filled with carbonated water. It comes together in under a minute once the syrups are to hand.
- The glassA soda glass of this era commonly held something on the order of 10 to 12 ounces, tall and flared. With half an ounce of each syrup and two ounces of claret, the soda water makes up most of the remaining volume.
- "Solid soda"Fountain taps offered a fine spray stream for whipping up foam and a solid stream for filling. Solid soda means the plain heavy stream, drawn straight in so the drink stays clear and fizzy rather than frothed.
- ClaretIn American usage claret meant a dry red Bordeaux or anything made in its image. A light, tannic, unoaked red works best; anything jammy or high in alcohol will bully the pineapple.
- Fountain syrupsPineapple and strawberry syrup were often made in-house from sugar and fruit, and may taste less aggressively sweet than modern snow-cone syrups. If using a commercial syrup, taste first and consider scaling back to a scant half ounce each.
- Shaved ice, not cubesA spoonful of shaved or finely crushed ice is all that is called for. Cubes displace too much liquid and knock the proportions out, and the drink is meant to be sipped cold rather than diluted.
- "Horse's Neck"This trailing note most likely refers to the glass and its peel garnish rather than to a second recipe. A horse's neck is a single unbroken spiral of lemon peel cut with a paring knife, one end hooked over the rim so the coil hangs down inside the glass.
- MintSlap the sprig once between your palms before setting it in. It releases the oils without bruising the leaves into the drink.
- YieldOne tall glass. Alcohol content is low, on the order of a very light spritzer.
Soda fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried a whole class of wine-and-soda drinks -- claret lemonades, sherry cobblers, port flips -- built on the same equipment as the ice cream sodas, and this punch belongs to that family. The Honolulu name follows a fashion for tropical labels that swept American menus after Hawaii's annexation in 1898, when the Hawaiian canning industry was scaling up through the 1900s and 1910s and any drink containing pineapple could be given an island title; the connection to Hawaii is generally decorative rather than culinary. The "Horse's Neck" tag is often said to be older still: the long lemon spiral was a standard fountain and bar garnish, and the name is traditionally held to have attached to plain ginger ale with that peel before it became shorthand for the peel itself. That a temperance-adjacent institution like the soda fountain served claret at all is a reminder that fountains were not originally dry, though many were serving nothing alcoholic well before Prohibition made the matter one of law.