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Pineapple Smash
Pineapple Syrup, 1 ounce; Shaved Ice, ½ tumblerful; Powdered Sugar, 1 teaspoonful. Add soda water, large stream; strain in small tumbler, and add a piece of pineapple.
A single fountain drink, built the way a bartender builds a smash: sweetened syrup, a tumbler packed with ice, and carbonated water driven in hard. The whole point is the coarse stream, so start there.
- "Large stream" is the hingeFountain draft arms offered more than one stream: a fine one for delicate foams and a coarse or large one for agitation. A large stream drives the syrup and sugar up through the ice and mixes the drink without a spoon. From a siphon or bottle, pour fast and straight down the centre.
- MeasuresOne ounce of syrup is 2 tablespoons. If a period tumbler runs 8 to 10 ounces, half a tumblerful of shaved ice is roughly half a cup, loosely packed; the recipe does not say what size the "small tumbler" is. Yield is one drink.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain books this means finely ground granulated sugar, sold as fruit or berry sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine (caster) sugar is the right substitute; cornstarch will cloud the glass.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved or finely cracked ice gives the surface area the coarse stream needs to work against. Cubes will simply sit there and the drink stays stratified.
- StrainingThe ice is a mixing tool here, not part of the finished glass. Strain the drink off it into the serving tumbler, which is why the result is short and cold rather than diluted.
- Pineapple syrupCommercial fountain syrup of the period was a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with pineapple; some formulas used juice from canned fruit. A thick homemade pineapple syrup or a good bar syrup works; thin fruit juice will not carry enough sugar or body.
- The garnish"A piece of pineapple" means a wedge or chunk dropped in at the end. Canned pineapple in syrup will serve as well as fresh.
"Smash" is borrowed straight from the bar, where it described a short drink of spirits, sugar and crushed ice, usually with mint. American soda fountains of the late nineteenth century took over the whole vocabulary of the saloon -- smashes, fizzes, cobblers, sours, punches -- and rebuilt each one around flavoured syrup and carbonated water, which is why fountain manuals of this era read so much like bartenders' guides with the liquor deleted. Pineapple syrup was one of the standard bottles on the fountain's back bar alongside lemon, vanilla and raspberry. The recipe's brevity is typical of the genre, which assumed a trained clerk who already knew the equipment in front of him and how to pack a tumbler with shaved ice.