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Pineapple Cardinal
Two ounces pineapple syrup, 1 ounce Catawba syrup, 2 ounces shaved ice. Half fill with coarse stream, stir, and fill with fine stream.
A fountain formula written for a marble counter with a two-stream draft arm. Everything translates to a home kitchen except the equipment, which is the whole point of the drink.
- Coarse and fine streamFountain taps drew carbonated water two ways: the coarse (or heavy) stream came out fast and full-bore to mix the syrup, the fine stream was a fanned spray used to finish the glass. With a siphon or a bottle of cold seltzer, pour the first half hard down the middle of the glass, then add the rest more slowly.
- OuncesFluid ounces throughout: 2 oz pineapple syrup is 1/4 cup, 1 oz Catawba syrup is 2 tablespoons. The 2 ounces of shaved ice is measured by volume in the glass, not weighed.
- Catawba syrupA sweet non-alcoholic syrup flavored with Catawba grape, a native American variety with a distinctly foxy, musky character. It is not the same as generic grape syrup made from Concord, though Concord is the closest thing still widely sold; a red grape syrup or good grape molasses thinned with sugar syrup will read correctly against the pineapple.
- Pineapple syrupFountain pineapple syrup was made by steeping crushed fruit or canned juice in heavy sugar syrup, not the thin canned juice sold today. If you are substituting juice, sweeten it to roughly equal parts sugar or the drink will taste watery and sour.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved ice is called for because it chills instantly and dissolves into the syrup as you stir; cubes will sit there and knock the foam down when the fine stream hits them.
- Order of workStir after the coarse stream and before the fine stream, as written. Stirring at the end flattens the head.
The American soda fountain ran on a house vocabulary of syrups, and "cardinal" was one of its color words: a red or crimson drink. The red here comes from the Catawba syrup. Catawba is an American grape, generally traced to the Carolinas and named for the Catawba River, that became commercially important in Ohio in the mid-1800s as the basis of a sparkling wine; when that wine trade faded, grape flavor survived at the fountain in syrup form, and Catawba syrup stayed on dispenser price lists long after most drinkers had lost track of what the grape tasted like. Formulas like this one, giving nothing but ounces and stream sizes, were written for a working dispenser who already knew the glass, the ice and the arm on his own machine.