Analog Fassionola Recipe

A quick post with my recipe for “Analog Fassionola”, an old-school tiki ingredient that’s shrouded in some mystery.

Originally, I shared my take on fassionola in a series of tweets, so the photography isn’t what we’d call… professional. Nonetheless, they get the point across. There’s been a lot of interest in it, so here we are.

I chose analog as the descriptor because it doesn’t involve any heating or electricity. Tiki homesteaders of the 1700s could have made it with some bowls and a crude strainer.

As much as I wish I’d put this recipe in my Minimalist Tiki book, the third printing had already gone to the printers. Oh well… Next time.

Before we get to the recipe, let me be clear. This recipe is not an exact science. It’s very loose, and I’m ok with that. Basically, what you’ll be doing is:

• Making fruit salad
• Dousing it in sugar and waiting a day
• Adding passion fruit purée
• Straining and bottling

What follows is a mostly cleaned up version of the text from the original tweets. I make no claim that it’s my finest writing to date.

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Analog Fassionola Recipe (See disclaimer below)

• 1 cup strawberries, moderately chopped
• 1 cup blueberries, moderately chopped
• 1 cup freshly cut pineapple, moderately chopped
• Optional: Lemon peel
• Optional: Mango, raspberries, or whatever else you damn well please
• 1 or 2 pounds of sugar (see instructions)
• Passion Fruit Purée, e.g. Funkin Passion Fruit Purée. (Not syrup!!! It should be tart, not sweet!)

Important: Let me be very clear: What we’re making here is a fruit salad, heavy on the berries. Nothing in the above ingredient list is cast in stone. Use whatever the heck sounds good to you. If it evokes the flavor of Kool-Aid when you’re done, you’re on track.

Instructions

An old school way to make Fassionola, sans heat or power! Because science! And we’ve got nothing else pressing us for time during this pandemic.

Assemble your fresh fruit & berries (except the passion fruit purée) and chop it moderately fine. About 2 pounds of fruit yielded around a quart of fassionola for me.

Weigh your fruit on a kitchen scale. Grab a BIG bowl and add the fruit. Now add an equal amount (by weight) of sugar. If you have 34 oz of fruit, add 34 oz of sugar.

Yes, it will be a lot of sugar! And it will look impossibly dry. Never fear!

We’ll be letting sugar’s hydrophilic nature draw out all the juices. No heating, no juicers. This is analog, after all! Mix the fruit and sugar well. Cover and let sit.

Optional: As soon as you’ve added the sugar, peel a lemon or two and throw that into the mix. You’re basically making Oleo Saccharum in addition to everything else.

Look at it after just four hours! Stir occasionally to keep the sugar from collecting on the bottom.

Twenty-four hours in. Look at that extraction!

After a day or so, mash up the fruit, then strain it out, leaving the liquid behind. I used a series of successively fine metal strainers. Measure how much syrup you have with a measuring cup, then place in a storage vessel such as a large sterilized mason jar with some extra room.

Now, you’ll need passion fruit purée, NOT syrup. The purée is quite tart. Add about ¼ as much purée as syrup. For example, if you have 32 oz of syrup, and 8 oz of purée. But feel free to adjust the amount of purée to your desired tartness.

Stir. Refrigerate. If desired, add high proof alcohol to inhibit spoilage. For example, with a quart of syrup, 2 oz of Everclear or other high proof neutral alcohol is probably fine.