Passionfruit sparkling water, three ways
The unsweetened infusion, the syrup, and the ratio that makes the finished drink.
In season: Peaks in summer and again in midwinter depending on where it shipped from. Buy the wrinkled ones. Frozen pulp from Latin markets is genuinely good and about a third of the price.
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Infused, unsweetened
Use
Pulp of 4 passionfruit per 1 litre, seeds and all
Method
Halve them, scoop everything into cold still water, stir hard for thirty seconds to knock the pulp off the seeds. Refrigerate, then strain through a sieve.
Time
2 hours. It is the fastest fruit in the batch because the flavour is already sitting in loose pulp instead of locked inside flesh.
Sparkling
Still water for the two hours, then top. Passionfruit is acidic and pulpy and it drops the fizz out of sparkling water fast if you infuse straight into it.
Keeps
3 days refrigerated once strained. It holds longer than most fruit because it comes out around pH 3.
The syrup
Ratio
1 cup passionfruit pulp : 1 cup sugar : 1/2 cup water
Method
Warm the water and sugar only until the sugar dissolves, take the pan off the heat, stir the pulp in. Cool, then strain. It should never come to a rolling boil.
Keeps
3 weeks refrigerated, 6 months frozen
Note
The passionfruit smell is a set of volatile esters, and a hard boil sends them into the kitchen air instead of the bottle. A syrup that smelled incredible while cooking and tastes of nothing in the glass is a syrup you boiled.
The finished soda
1 part syrup to 5 parts sparkling water, over ice
Spoon some of the strained seeds back into the glass. They do nothing for the flavour and everything for whether it reads as passionfruit.
What doesn't work: Straining the pulp first to get a clean drink. The membrane clinging to the seeds carries most of the aroma, and juice pressed through a sieve up front comes out thin and sour. Whole scoop into the water, stir hard, strain at the end.
Goes with: MangoLimeLycheeHabanero