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Lemonade (Pint water quart ice-water cup)
1 pint water 1 quart ice-water 1 cup sugar 1 can grated pineapple Juice 3 lemons Make syrup by boiling water and sugar ten minutes; add pineapple and lemon juice, cool, strain, and add ice-water.
A pineapple lemonade built on a boiled sugar syrup, which is the right approach: syrup dissolves fully in cold water where granulated sugar sinks and sits.
- Can of grated pineapplePeriod cans of grated pineapple ran roughly a pound, and were often packed in syrup. A modern 20 oz can of crushed pineapple in juice is a reasonable substitute; if you use pineapple packed in syrup, cut the sugar back.
- Sugar and syrupTen minutes at a boil takes the syrup past simple dissolution and concentrates it slightly. Five minutes is enough for a clear syrup; watch that it does not reduce far enough to start colouring.
- LemonsThree lemons of the period gave roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of juice. Measure rather than count, and taste before the final dilution.
- StrainStrain through a fine sieve, pressing the pineapple pulp to get the juice out. Leaving the shredded fibre in makes the drink cloudy and unpleasant to sip through a straw or over ice.
- Chill before ice-waterCool the syrup thoroughly first, as directed. Adding a quart of ice-water to hot syrup melts the chill out of the drink and dilutes the flavour by the time it is cold.
- YieldThe water alone comes to six cups; with the canned pineapple and the lemon juice the finished quantity is nearer two quarts. It is meant to be served over ice, which will dilute it further, so err on the tart side.
Fruit-flavoured lemonades were a staple of American summer entertaining by the turn of the century, and this one belongs to the era when canned pineapple became cheap and reliable enough for everyday household use. Before commercial canning, grated pineapple meant buying a whole fruit and shredding it by hand; the can turned a luxury into a pantry item, and cookbooks of the period wrote it into punches, sherbets and beverages. Cold fruit beverages of this kind were treated as both refreshment and mild restorative.