PINEAPPLE JULEP

1/2 c. gin
1 bottle sparkling Moselle wine
1/2 c. raspberry syrup
1/2 c. juice from maraschino cherries
1 pineapple
Juice of 2 oranges (about 1/2 c.)

Peel, slice and cup up a ripe pineapple into a glass bowl; add the juice of two oranges, a gill of raspberry syrup, a gill of maraschino, a gill of old gin, a bottle of sparkling Moselle, and about a pound of pure ice in shaves; mix, ornament with berries in season, and serve in flat glasses.

From Bon-Vivant's Companion by Jerry Thomas, New York, 1862

Comment: A "gill" is about half a standard measuring cup, or 4 ounces. Moselle is a white wine. And yes, pineapples were readily available in Civil War times, at least in larger cities where ships carrying cargoes from tropical regions docked on a regular basis. Mr. Thomas, having mastered the bartending trade in San Francisco during the Gold Rush days of the late 1840s, probably got his from Hawaii.

In fact the only real puzzle in his otherwise masterful work is why he includes no vodka drinks. Russia still owned what is now Alaska in those days and their ships called at San Francisco on a regular basis, so it seems unlikely he did not know about the liquor. Perhaps it required improvements in the Russo-American import-export business, and Jerry did not wish to tantalize his readers with an ingredient they could not readily obtain.

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