Frozen Melon Colada

What to expect

Taste

Sweet, and the drink makes no pretence otherwise — but the good version is sweet in three separate registers rather than one. Melon liqueur leads with a candied, slightly artificial honeydew flavour that is unmistakable and unlike any real melon. Pineapple comes underneath it with a genuine tropical acidity and a faint savoury edge. Cream of coconut adds a rich, fatty, vanilla-ish sweetness and most of the body. And then the lime cuts across all of it, which is the difference between a drink and a dessert — 15ml is enough acid to make the sweetness read as fruit rather than as sugar. The rum is almost undetectable as a flavour and contributes warmth and length. Cold suppresses sweetness perception substantially, so this tastes markedly sweeter as it melts, and it is worth being slightly aggressive with the lime for that reason.

Aroma

Quiet at first, because of the temperature, and then increasingly loud as it warms. Melon is the first thing and it smells like sweets rather than like fruit. Coconut sits under it, warm and fatty. Pineapple is the third note and the only genuinely fresh-smelling one. There is no rum on the nose at all.

Texture

Thick, smooth and genuinely creamy, and the creaminess is the coconut fat rather than dairy. It is the fullest-bodied drink in the collection by a distance — closer to a milkshake than to a cocktail — and it coats the mouth in a way nothing else here does. That coating is why the lime matters so much: without acid to scrub it off, the fat sits on the tongue and the next mouthful tastes duller than the last. It separates within about five minutes into a watery layer and a foam.

Sound

The blender, and nothing else. It runs smoother and quieter than the strawberry version because there is no frozen fruit hammering around the jug — an even rising whine that levels off when the mixture is homogeneous. After pouring, the drink is completely silent. It is thick enough that even the straw makes no noise.

How the flavour moves

Cold and thickness first, before any flavour registers. Then melon, sweet and immediate. Coconut through the middle, fatty and long. Pineapple's acidity arriving behind it, and then the lime, which is the last thing and the sharpest. The finish is coconut — it lingers longer than anything else because fat carries flavour and does not clear quickly. Over the glass it gets sweeter, softer and heavier, and the last third is noticeably less pleasant than the first, which is an argument for a smaller glass than tradition allows.

Serve it

A degree or two below zero and falling apart within five minutes. There is no ice in the glass to hold it, and the fat content makes the texture degrade faster than a fruit-only frozen drink — as the emulsion warms it breaks. Chill the glass; it is worth a minute or two of the drink's short life.

Goes with

It does not want food and it is not really improved by any. Salt is the only thing that helps: crisps, salted nuts, salted plantain chips. It works against chilli heat for the same reason every sweet cold drink does. With dessert it is simply too much, and with a meal it is the wrong thing entirely.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy. The only judgement is texture, and the recipe gives a physical test for it. The only knowledge required is what cream of coconut is, which is why this dossier leads with it.

Cost

Moderate to set up. Melon liqueur and cream of coconut are both single-purpose bottles that most kitchens do not have, and neither is expensive. Per drink it is cheap.

Equipment

A blender that can handle ice. A citrus squeezer. A hurricane or other large glass, chilled. A straw, preferably a reusable one, since a drink this thick genuinely needs one.

When to make it

Hot weather, daytime, outdoors. Never before a meal.

Best season

None. Every ingredient is a year-round product.

You know it is done when

An even, opaque, pale green with no streaks and no visible ice fragments. Streaking means the cream of coconut has not emulsified and it needs another five seconds.

And it feels like

A straw stood upright in the middle should stay up. If it leans, a small handful of ice and five more seconds.

Food safety

Nothing raw. Cream of coconut, once opened, must go in the fridge and be used within a week or so — it is a sugar-rich emulsion and it does spoil.

Where it goes wrong

Using coconut milk or coconut cream instead of cream of coconut, which is the fault that makes people conclude the recipe is wrong — the drink comes out thin and unsweet and nothing about the method explains why. Not shaking the tin before measuring. Leaving out the lime, which turns a sweet drink into a sickly one. Over-blending, which warms and thins it. A warm glass. And leaving a third of the drink behind in the blender jug, which is easy to do with something this thick.

If it does go wrong

Thin: more ice, five more seconds. Too sweet: 5 to 10ml more lime, which is what the recipe's tasting step is for. Streaky or separated in the jug: under-blended — the cream of coconut has not emulsified, give it another five seconds. Separated in the glass: it is warming, and there is no fix. Tastes flat and not very green: some melon liqueurs are much milder than others, and the answer is more liqueur rather than more of anything else.

Making it ahead

The liquid part can be mixed and kept cold for a day: rum, liqueur, pineapple juice, cream of coconut and lime in a bottle, shaken before use. Blend with ice to order. Do not blend ahead.

Keeping it

None as a drink.

Reheating

Not applicable.

Freezing

No — it sets solid rather than staying slushy.

Leftovers

The opened tin of cream of coconut is the real leftover and it does not keep long. Plan a second drink, or use the rest in a curry or a cake, where it works well.

Scaling it

Doubles comfortably in a standard blender. Beyond that, blend in batches — an overfull jug does not circulate and leaves lumps.

Substitutions

Cream of coconut is the one thing that cannot be substituted without changing the drink. Coconut cream is unsweetened and much thicker; coconut milk is unsweetened and much thinner; either will work only if you add sugar syrup and adjust, and neither gives the same emulsified texture. On the liqueur: Midori is the standard and any melon liqueur will do the same job — the colour is added rather than natural in most of them. White rum can be replaced with an aged one for a rounder drink, or left out entirely for a very good non-alcoholic version.

Dietary swaps

Vegan and dairy-free as written — there is no dairy in it despite the texture, which surprises people. Nut-free, though coconut is classed as a tree nut in some jurisdictions and anyone with a tree-nut allergy should treat it accordingly. Gluten-free. A non-alcoholic version works well: drop the rum and the liqueur, add 30ml more pineapple juice and a little melon syrup or fresh melon, and keep the lime.

Shopping for it

Cream of coconut, sold in tins and usually near the cocktail mixers rather than with the coconut milk. Melon liqueur. Pineapple juice, and fresh-pressed if you can get it. Fresh limes.

Keeping the cost down

Cream of coconut is the awkward purchase because a tin makes several drinks and does not keep long once opened — make two, or plan to use the rest in cooking, where it works well in a curry or a coconut cake. Use the cheapest white rum; it contributes nothing here that a more expensive one would improve.

Sustainability

Nothing notable, beyond the general point about imported tropical ingredients. The tin is the main packaging cost and using all of it is the only lever.

Nutrition

Around 420 calories, and the highest-calorie drink in the collection. Most of that is sugar and coconut fat rather than alcohol; it carries roughly 1.6 UK units, which is modest for its size. Worth knowing precisely because it does not taste strong.

Worth it?

Worth it once you understand cream of coconut, and largely not worth attempting until you do — this is the recipe on the site most likely to fail for a reason the method never mentions. Made correctly with a proper measure of lime it is a genuinely good drink rather than a joke, and the non-alcoholic version is one of the better ones in the collection.

Where it comes from

Origin

Puerto Rico for the piña colada that this descends from. The melon version has no origin worth claiming — it is a bar variation of the 1980s onwards.

Also called

Piña colada means strained pineapple, which describes the parent drink and not this one.

Said out loud

As it looks in English. Colada is ko-LAH-dah.

What the name means

Colada names the family — a blended, coconut-and-pineapple drink. Melon names what has been added to it.

History

Two things make this drink possible and both are twentieth-century products. The first is cream of coconut, developed in Puerto Rico in the 1950s by Ramón López Irizarry as a way of making coconut usable without hours of grating and pressing; it is coconut cream with sugar and emulsifiers, and every colada depends on it. The second is Midori, a melon liqueur launched by Suntory in 1978 and introduced in New York at a Studio 54 party — which is as precisely dated an ingredient as anything in this collection. The piña colada itself is claimed by the Caribe Hilton for Ramón Marrero in 1954 and by Barrachina for Ramón Portas Mingot in 1963, and Puerto Rico made it the national drink in 1978.

Why it matters

The colada is the drink that stands, fairly or not, for the whole idea of a holiday cocktail, and it has been a punchline for about as long as it has been popular. The melon version belongs to a specific and fairly brief moment in bar history when bright green drinks were fashionable, which is worth knowing because it explains the colour.

When it is eaten

Hot afternoons, holidays, and by a pool. There is no serious occasion for it and that is not a criticism.

The traditional way

Blended with ice. The original piña colada was shaken rather than blended in some early accounts, which produces a thinner, colder drink and is worth trying if you want to see where the recipe came from.

How it changed

The whole colada family got sweeter and more artificial through the 1980s and 1990s, as pre-mixed colada bases replaced cream of coconut and juice, and has been coming back towards real ingredients since. The lime in this recipe is a modern correction rather than a traditional element — early coladas have no acid in them at all, and are correspondingly heavier.

Regional variations

The straight piña colada is the parent. A Chi Chi replaces the rum with vodka. Every fruit liqueur has been tried in this template and most of them work, because cream of coconut and pineapple are a forgiving base.

How this version differs

In having lime in it, which many melon colada recipes do not, and in saying so explicitly as the thing to taste for. It also pulls the cream of coconut back to 30ml, which is less than a classic colada uses, because the melon liqueur is already contributing a great deal of sugar.

Sources and credit

The piña colada attributions are the two standing claims and are given as claims. Midori's 1978 launch by Suntory is documented. Cream of coconut's development by Ramón López Irizarry is the standard account.

Related recipes

Categories