Applebee's Shark Bowl

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The whole appeal of this drink is visual: a bright blue bowl with a red plume sinking through it and a gummy shark in the middle. The blue part is easy. The red plume is the part that goes wrong, and it goes wrong for a reason worth understanding.

Why grenadine sinks

Grenadine is a heavy sugar syrup — roughly 60% sugar by weight — which makes it considerably denser than the drink you are pouring it into. Poured gently, it falls through the lighter liquid and settles at the bottom without mixing.

That only works if the base is less dense than the grenadine. Sweeten the blue base too heavily and the difference closes up. Pour the grenadine fast and you introduce turbulence that mixes it regardless of density.

So: keep the base light on sugar, and pour the grenadine slowly down the inside of the glass or over the back of a spoon.

Add it last, after the ice. Ice slows the pour and helps it settle cleanly.

What you need

• 60 ml white rum
• 30 ml blue curaçao
• 120 ml pineapple juice
• 60 ml lemonade or soda water
• 15 ml grenadine
• plenty of ice
• a gummy shark

Method

1. Fill a large bowl glass or fishbowl with ice.
2. Add the rum, blue curaçao and pineapple juice. Stir briefly.
3. Top with the lemonade.
4. Pour the grenadine slowly over the back of a spoon, letting it run down to the bottom. Do not stir after this.
5. Drop the gummy shark in.

The pineapple juice is doing more than flavour

Pineapple juice is cloudy, which is what turns a transparent blue drink into an opaque one. Opacity is what makes the red plume read as a plume rather than as a red stripe you can see straight through.

Clear juices — white grape, apple — give you a prettier blue and a much less dramatic effect.

Getting the blue right

Blue curaçao is an orange liqueur with colouring. 30 ml gives a strong, unmistakable blue against the yellow of pineapple juice, which lands slightly green-teal rather than pure blue. That is correct and it is what the restaurant version looks like.

More curaçao does not make it bluer past a point — it makes it sweeter and starts to close the density gap the grenadine needs.

Storing

None. It is built in the glass over ice and the whole effect collapses within about ten minutes as the grenadine diffuses.

You can pre-mix the rum, curaçao and pineapple as a batch and keep it in the fridge for two days, then pour over ice and add grenadine to order.