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Pineapple Sherbet (One ounce pineapple syrup)
One ounce pineapple syrup, ½ glass shaved ice. Draw into 12-ounce glass, fill with soda, stir, add spoonful crushed strawberry; top with slice of orange; serve with straws; or, draw ounce of syrup into 8-ounce glass; add large spoonful of either canned or fresh grated pineapple; fill with shaved ice, stir, serve with spoon.
This is a soda-fountain formula, written for a dispenser with a syrup pump and a carbonated water draft arm. Everything it needs can be assembled at home, but the vocabulary assumes the counter.
- "Sherbet" here is a drinkAt the fountain a sherbet was a syrup-and-soda beverage, sometimes with fruit or a little fruit acid, not a frozen dessert. Nothing in this formula is churned or frozen.
- One ounce of syrupTwo tablespoons. Fountain syrups were thick and heavily sweetened, so one ounce sweetens a full 12-ounce glass. A modern thin cordial will taste weak at that dose.
- "Draw" and "soda"To draw is to pump the measured syrup into the glass. Soda is plain carbonated water, not a flavoured soft drink. Use chilled seltzer and pour down the side of the glass so the head does not blow over.
- Shaved ice, not cubesHalf a glass of shaved or finely crushed ice is the point: it chills instantly and lets the syrup and soda mix with one stir. Cubes will leave the syrup sitting on the bottom.
- Stir once, gentlyThe hinge of any fountain drink. A vigorous stir strips the carbonation and you are left with sweet pineapple water; two or three lifts with a long spoon is enough.
- Canned pineapple then and nowCanned pineapple in this period was generally packed in syrup and was already sweet. If you use fruit packed in juice, expect a less sugary result; the recipe itself allows either canned or fresh grated pineapple.
- The second version is a different drinkAn 8-ounce glass, no soda at all — syrup, a large spoon of pineapple, and shaved ice, eaten with a spoon like a granita. Serve the first with straws, the second with a spoon, as written.
- YieldOne glass. Both versions are single servings and neither holds; build them to order.
The American soda fountain of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ran on books exactly like this one: pages of one-line formulas measured in ounces of syrup and glass sizes, so a dispenser could work quickly at a marble counter. Pineapple was a fountain favourite, and commercial canning had made it far more widely available than it had been a generation earlier, when it was still something of a luxury. The garnish instructions are part of the trade: a spoonful of crushed strawberry for colour against the pale syrup, a slice of orange on the rim, straws supplied. Fountain drinks were sold as much on appearance as flavour, and the dispenser was expected to build them where the customer could watch.