DIY Plum Soda

a recipe from superiority burger + bonus yogurt topper

as refreshing as planting your face in front of the AC unit

It’s been a week of plums over here at Mess Hall HQ. On Monday morning I made the trek to Union Square Greenmarket, a rare but worthwhile weekday journey. I was set on plums, and got far more than I needed. (I also got a few nice tomatoes, my favorite She Wolf polenta pullman, a veritable thicket of tarragon, and some melons for Brette.) Plums are, and have always been, my favorite stone fruit: peaches are lovely, sure; nectarines are always a nice surprise; apricots are not my thing. For my money, nothing beats the deep purple heart of a plum. Even when they’re not amazing, they’re still excellent, and when cooked, they turn sticky and perfect. So I load up on them when I have the opportunity. On Monday, I bought three pounds. On Tuesday, I made Marian Burros’ plum torte. On Wednesday, I made soda.

In June, still dwelling on the dream of the pool party, I reached out to Superiority Burger, one of my favorite restaurants, because I wanted a soda recipe. You’ll often find people making the argument that Superiority Burger is really a dessert restaurant, and while I’m sympathetic to this line of thinking, I also think it is, in a small way, a soda shop. There’s always at least one house soda on the menu, usually something seasonal; often they’ve got a POG¹ option in the rotation, which always makes me feel beachy. You can keep the soda as is—I won’t even call it a mocktail, it is simply an elegant, fruity, not-very-sweet soda—or add your liquor of choice, and I am usually doing the latter. It’s a fresh and simple drink, which makes it pair well with food, so I can order a second without worrying it’s gonna clash with my veggie burger or whatever.

(Yellow Rose, a Tex-Mex restaurant run by a Superiority Burger alumn, has a similar setup—they always have a house shrub, mixed with soda, and you can add booze to that too. More restaurants, in my humble opinion, should do this! Plus I find it more appealing, simpler, more graceful than most “mocktails”.)

Pastry chef Katie Toles is in charge of Superiority Burger’s soda program, and told me that her favorite summer soda is their plum tarragon, then sent along the recipe. I love tarragon—it’s CRUCIAL to this green goddess cashew dip that you really should be making—and as mentioned am a plum freak, so I was intrigued.

The process is simple, as far as “making your own soda” goes. I already knew that the restaurant mixes a pre-batched syrup/puree situation with soda, so I didn’t need to worry about acquiring any BDS-compliant soda makers. I began by making the plum purée, cooking my pitted plums and some sugar “hard and fast”, per Katie’s instructions², and then blending them until they were thick and smooth and a near hypnotic ruby-purple. The purée tasted like plum essence, all killer, no filler. Here’s what it looked like on a bowl of oatmeal, I mean come on:

look at how GLOSSY and VIBRANT this stuff is !!!

Next came the tarragon simple syrup, simple enough, though I ended up scaling back the tarragon a bit; its first test drive was a little strong for me, though maybe I’d just packed my herbs too tight when measuring. I like it when tarragon is gentle with me, so I’ve tweaked the recipe to avoid that brash licorice wallop.

I was dreaming, too, of other herbs you could spin into this: I’m desperate to try a shiso syrup next! I plucked some of the basil that’s overflowing at the community garden, and tried out a basil syrup, which was breezy and subtle and would be perfect for any tarragon/licorice haters. (I’ve included that recipe below, too.)

I kept forgetting to try this with booze, which either speaks to my energy this week or the fact that this is so good it wants for nothing. Katie recommended gin, and I had a little jam jar labeled GIN on my bar cart, so I tossed some in there, only to find it was, in fact vodka. I think the greatest argument I can make for this recipe is that it had me happily, even enthusiastically, drinking vodka. (Katie also said that shochu, or even prosecco, would be great with this. Again, yum.)

Now that I have the process down, there are so many other sodas I want to try my hand at: raspberry with mint, peach with basil, concord grape!! Can you imagine? It’s soda season, baby.

Plum Tarragon Soda

(or Plum Basil Soda)

Adapted from Superiority Burger

Makes a lot