POG — Passion Fruit, Orange and Guava

POG is the local name for a blend of lilikoʻi, orange and guava juice, sold in cartons and cans and poured at home, at potlucks and at the beach across the islands. All three fruits arrived in Hawaiʻi after contact, which makes the drink a product of the post-contact orchard and of the local table that grew around it, not of the canoe-plant kitchen. Alana Kysar, in Aloha Kitchen, writes of it as a drink so common that she never thought of it as belonging to Hawaiʻi alone, and she gives home versions made from fresh juice.

The drink combines the juice of lilikoʻi (passion fruit, Passiflora edulis), orange (Citrus sinensis) and guava (Psidium guajava). Guava gives the body, smooth and slightly thick, and its aroma; lilikoʻi gives the tartness; orange gives the sweetness. In Aloha Kitchen the home version is whisked from guava juice or a puree thinned with water, lilikoʻi juice and fresh orange juice, with a little 1:1 simple syrup and an optional measure of lime juice, and it is served over ice with an orange slice.

POG is drunk cold, with the plate lunch, the potluck table and the afternoon at the beach, where its sweetness stands against salt and fat in foods such as mochiko chicken or Spam musubi. Its tartness cleans the palate between bites, and the guava body holds up to ice without thinning to water. Kysar notes that the commercial drink is very sweet, and her home versions temper it with fresh juice and a little lime.