Pineapple Water

Eau d’Ananas (pineapple water) teaches infusion à chaud (hot infusion): chopped fruit yields its perfume to boiling syrup, then seltzer carries that perfume lightly rather than burying it in pulp. The drink should be clear, pale gold, and alive with bubbles, with Kirsch arriving as a dry cherry scent at the finish. The one true thing is temperature: the syrup must be fully boiling when it reaches the finely chopped pineapple.

The formula assumed a syrup hydrometer for 20° and 9° Baumé, a woollen filtering bag, a block of service ice, and a pitcher built from 680 g of pineapple. Here the proportions are halved for six glasses; 20° syrup becomes a weighed sugar-and-water ratio, the woollen bag becomes a dampened jelly bag or paper-lined sieve, and the liqueur-glass measure becomes 45 ml. Those instruments are brigade scaffolding and can go. The boiling infusion, full two-hour rest, fine straining, twenty-minute chill with seltzer, and Kirsch added at service are the dish and must stay.

Chop, don't blend. A blender tears the fruit into pulp that no patient straining can make truly clear. Get the cut fine and pour the syrup over it at a full boil; that first meeting decides the Eau d’Ananas.