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Pineapple Syrup (American Pineapple Juice quart)
American Pineapple Juice, 1 quart; American Fruit Acid, 2 ounces; American Soda Foam, ¾ ounce. Add enough simple syrup to make 11½ gallons.
If a 10-pound syrup is used, dissolve 2 pounds sugar in the juice by stirring or by slight heat, but avoid boiling.
This is a trade formula for a soda fountain, not a home kitchen: it makes almost twelve gallons of flavouring syrup to be drawn an ounce or two at a time under carbonated water. Everything here scales cleanly, but two of the four ingredients are proprietary preparations that need translating.
- Do not boilThe instruction to dissolve the sugar "by stirring or by slight heat, but avoid boiling" is the hinge. Pineapple's aroma is volatile and boiling both drives it off and cooks the juice to a stewed, tinned flavour that no amount of acid will brighten.
- Scale it downFor one US gallon of finished syrup, use roughly 2¾ fl oz pineapple juice, about ⅙ oz (1 teaspoon) fruit acid solution and a scant ⅖ teaspoon of foam, made up with simple syrup. At 1 to 1½ oz of syrup per glass, a gallon is around 100 drinks.
- American Fruit AcidA branded acidulant, in practice a strong solution of citric or tartaric acid in water. Modern equivalent is citric acid dissolved to taste; because commercial strengths varied, add it gradually and stop when the syrup tastes bright rather than sharp.
- American Soda FoamA foaming agent, typically an extract of quillaia (soapbark) or a similar saponin. It is what gave fountain drinks their head. Food-grade quillaia extract is still sold and is permitted only at low levels, so follow the current product's dosing rather than the ¾ ounce here.
- "A 10-pound syrup"Fountain simple syrups were generally specified by the weight of sugar they carried, usually reckoned per gallon. A 10-pound syrup appears to be lighter than the standard the formula assumes, which is why 2 pounds of sugar are added back through the juice. The exact house standard behind this recipe is not stated, so treat the 2 pounds as an adjustment for a thinner syrup rather than a fixed conversion.
- The juiceThe capitalised name points to a supply-house product rather than fresh-pressed juice; a canned or bottled juice is the closer match and also the more stable one, since fresh juice contains active bromelain and ferments quickly in a keg of syrup.
- KeepingA sugar syrup at fountain density is largely self-preserving, but the added juice is not. Refrigerate any batch you are not going through in a few days, and expect it to cloud and sour before a plain syrup would.
Soda fountain manuals of this kind were half cookbook, half catalogue: the capitalised "American" ingredients are branded goods from a supply house, and the formula is written to sell them as much as to teach the dispenser. Pineapple was a fountain staple in the first decades of the twentieth century, a five-cent flavour alongside lemon, orange and cherry. The foam is the period detail worth noticing: dispensers added saponin extracts so that a drawn glass would build a head like beer, and "foam syrups" had their own shelf in the fountain's supply list.