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Pineapple Floss Syrup
American Pineapple Floss, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; American Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: four gallons of finished pineapple syrup, built from two proprietary preparations a 1900s soda dispenser bought by the case. Scaling it down and substituting for the trade products is most of the work.
- What "Floss" wasFruit "floss" appears to have been a concentrated flavouring preparation sold to fountains under trade names; the exact composition behind the label is not recoverable from the formula. No modern equivalent is sold retail; a thick pineapple concentrate or a good crushed-pineapple purée cooked down is the nearest stand-in, and the sweetness of the finished syrup will need adjusting.
- Plain syrupAt the fountain this meant nothing but sugar and water, boiled or cold-dissolved, and fountain plain syrup was generally considerably denser than the equal-parts simple syrup most bar recipes use today. Use a heavier ratio or the finished syrup will taste thin and will spoil faster.
- American Fruit AcidA branded solution of citric or tartaric acid in water, added to give fruit syrups a tart edge. Substitute a citric acid solution and add it to taste at the end rather than by weight; one ounce in four quarts of a proprietary product tells you nothing reliable about the strength of yours.
- Proportions, not methodThe book gives proportions only and leaves the handling to the trade. Mixing cold and acidifying last is the sensible approach, since heating a finished fruit syrup dulls the aroma, which is exactly what the floss was bought for.
- Yield and dosingThis makes one gallon of finished syrup. Fountain practice was 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces of syrup per 8-ounce glass, topped with carbonated water — so roughly 85 to 128 drinks.
- Keeping itSugar at fountain density plus added acid keeps reasonably well, and fountain syrups were made in gallon lots for a trade that used them steadily. Refrigerate a scaled-down batch and expect a couple of weeks; discard at the first sign of fermentation or ropiness.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were written for the dispenser behind the counter, not the housewife, and they read like it: a list of trade goods and proportions, with the technique left to the trade. By the 1900s American fountain supply houses sold fruit preparations, "foundations," "fruit acids" and colourings under proprietary labels, and a book's formulas could double as advertising for a particular manufacturer's line — the repeated word "American" here looks more like a house brand than a description, though that is inference. Pineapple was a well-established fountain flavour, and the growth of the Hawaiian canning industry from the turn of the century made canned pineapple cheaper and more consistent. The result is a page that records less about cooking than about a supply chain: the dispenser's skill lay in dosing, carbonation and drawing a clean glass, while the flavour itself arrived in a tin.