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Pineapple Highball
1 can crushed pineapple
3 pints of water
1 large grapefruit
1 cup orange juice
Sprig of mint
Sugar to taste
Press the pineapple and grapefruit pulp through a sieve; add the orange juice, sugar and water. Serve in tall glasses, one-fourth filled with cracked ice, a slice of lime, a sprig of mint or a maraschino cherry.
A non-alcoholic fruit cooler despite the name — "highball" here refers only to the tall glass. It scales easily and needs no cooking.
- Can sizeCanned crushed pineapple came in several sizes in this period, including tins of about 15–16 oz and the No. 2 can of about 20 oz. A modern 20-oz can will serve; if it is packed in juice rather than heavy syrup you will want slightly more sugar.
- Sieving the pineapplePressing crushed pineapple through a sieve removes the fibrous shreds and leaves a cloudy juice. A blender plus a fine strainer does the same job faster, and will likely give more yield than pressing by hand.
- Grapefruit pulpSegment the grapefruit and strip the membrane before sieving, or the bitter pith goes through with the juice. One large grapefruit yields roughly 3/4 cup of juice.
- SugarGranulated sugar dissolves slowly and unevenly in cold liquid. Make a simple syrup, or dissolve the sugar in a little of the water while warm and cool it before mixing. Start with about 1/2 cup and adjust.
- Water quantityThree pints (6 cups) makes this quite thin by modern taste. Hold back a cup, taste, and add the rest only if the fruit flavour is still assertive.
- MintThe sprig in the base recipe is best bruised or steeped in the syrup rather than dropped in whole, which contributes little. The garnish sprig should be slapped between the palms to release its oil.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 quarts of finished drink before ice — eight to ten tall glasses. Chill thoroughly; the recipe relies on ice in the glass alone, which dilutes fast if the base is warm.
Between 1920 and 1933 American drink writing filled up with recipes like this one: fruit coolers borrowing the vocabulary of the bar — highball, fizz, cocktail, punch — while containing nothing stronger than orange juice. A highball properly means a spirit lengthened with soda water in a tall glass, and the term is generally traced to American bar slang of the 1890s; here it survives only as a shape of glass and a suggestion of sociability. Then there is the maraschino cherry and the slice of lime, garnishes borrowed from the cocktail hour. Canned crushed pineapple, cheap and shelf-stable since Hawaiian canning scaled up in the first decades of the century, did much of the work in these drinks, and a compilation like The Book of a Thousand Menus would have offered them as the beverage line on a luncheon or bridge-party menu.