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A Cinderella mocktail in a tall glass, cloudy gold with a pink grenadine base and a pineapple wedge
Alcohol-free
fruitytropicalrefreshingsweet

Cinderella

Pineapple, orange and lemon shaken with grenadine and lengthened with soda — the standard mocktail of the old bar books.

Difficulty
easy
Prep time
5 min
Strength
Alcohol-free
Glassware
Highball glass
Base
alcohol free
Serves
1

Related drinks

Ingredients

  • Pineapple juice
    60ml
  • Fresh orange juice
    60ml
  • Fresh lemon juice
    20ml
  • Grenadine
    10ml
  • Soda water, to top
    80ml

Garnish: Orange wheel, Maraschino cherry

Scale for a party

Method

  1. Add the pineapple, orange and lemon juices with the grenadine to a shaker with ice.
  2. Shake hard for 12-15 seconds — long enough to build a light foam on the pineapple juice.
  3. Strain into an ice-filled tall glass.
  4. Top with soda water and garnish with an orange wheel and a cherry.

Equipment

Don't have everything? Here's what works instead.

  • Cocktail shaker

    Household swap: A large jar with a tight lid — shake it over the sink the first time.

  • Hawthorne strainer

    Household swap: The lid of the jar, held slightly ajar, works as a strainer.

Missing an ingredient?

Each swap below says what it changes and how to correct for it, so you can decide whether you are making this drink or a neighbouring one.

  • Instead of Grenadine

    Best substitute: Raspberry Syrup (or Simple Syrup)

    This is the sweet element in this drink.

    Flavour impact: Raspberry keeps the colour and adds a brighter berry note; simple syrup keeps the balance but loses the pink tint entirely.

    What changes

    Expect less sweetness and more acidity. Still a good drink, and a slightly different one.

    Sweetness ↓
    Less sweetness leaves the acid and the spirit more exposed, so the drink will taste sharper and drier than it should.
    Acidity ↑
    More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
    Character
    Both are tart-sweet and fruity, and you lose vivid and pomegranate, and you gain berry and bright. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Add a little more syrup, a small amount at a time, until the edges come back together.
    • Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
    High confidenceA straightforward sweetener swap within an already-sweet build.Shifts the drink

  • Instead of Soda Water

    Best substitute: Ginger Ale

    This is the lengthener in this drink.

    Quantity: Same volume, and cut the grenadine to 5ml.

    Flavour impact: Adds spice and more sweetness — a rounder, more festive drink, closer to a punch.

    What changes

    Ginger Ale moves the drink a long way — more sweetness, more acidity and more intensity. This is worth making deliberately rather than as a stand-in.

    Sweetness ↑
    The drink will land sweeter, which also makes it read as less sharp and slightly heavier even though nothing else changed.
    Acidity ↑
    More acidity makes the drink taste fresher and drier, and can push a balanced sour over into sharp.
    Intensity ↑
    A more intensely flavoured ingredient will start to dominate the components around it.
    Character
    Both are fizzy and light, and you lose neutral and clean, and you gain mildly spicy and sweet. Numbers can't see this: two ingredients can be identically sour and still smell nothing alike.

    To correct for it

    • Cut the syrup or sugar back — start by halving it and taste before adding any back.
    • Use slightly less of it, or add a touch more sweetener to hold the balance.
    • Scale it back by a third and let the other ingredients hold their share.
    Moderate confidenceA common variation, though it makes an already-sweet drink sweeter.Makes a different drinkBecomes a variation

Want to change something these swaps do not cover — too sweet, too thin, a herb you dislike? How to adjust any mocktail works by what each component does rather than by ingredient name.

Make it better

  • Shake it properly. Pineapple juice foams when shaken, and that foam is most of what makes this feel like a cocktail rather than juice.
  • Top with the soda rather than shaking it in — carbonation is destroyed by shaking, and this drink needs the lift.
  • Fresh lemon over bottled matters here: it's the only thing holding back three sweet components.
  • Adjust sweetness gradually and taste as you go — it's easy to add more syrup, impossible to take it out.

Rescue this drink

Tastes like fruit juice
Under-shaken, or the soda was left out. Both are what separate this from a glass of juice.
Too sweet
Increase the lemon to 25ml and cut the grenadine to 5ml. Pineapple and orange are both sweet already.
Went flat immediately
The soda was shaken or poured into a warm glass. Top last, over plenty of ice.
It foams over when the mixer goes ingeneral guidance
Something in the glass is nucleating the carbonation — usually fresh ice with frost on it, or a sugary residue on the side. Pour the mixer slowly down the inside of the glass onto a spoon rather than onto the ice, and add it last. A drink built the other way round loses most of its fizz before it reaches the table.
Too sourgeneral guidance
Add a little more sweetener (simple syrup or the cocktail's usual sweetening ingredient), a small amount at a time.
Served too warmgeneral guidance
Chill the glass, ice and every ingredient ahead of time — a warm pour is the fastest way to lose a cold drink's balance. For one serving, there's no real fix beyond rebuilding it properly chilled; for a batch, keep everything refrigerated until the moment of serving and add ice last.
Over-diluted (tastes watery)general guidance
Likely shaken too long, or with too much ice surface area. For one serving there's no fixing it after the fact — rebuild with fewer, larger ice cubes and a shorter shake. Planning a batch? Shorten the ice-contact time across the whole round, not just this glass.
Under-diluted (tastes harsh or too concentrated)general guidance
For one serving, stir in a few drops of chilled water to open it up. For a batch, extend the shake time slightly on the next round.
No cocktail shakergeneral guidance
A large jar with a tight lid — shake it over the sink the first time.
No cocktail strainergeneral guidance
The lid of the jar, held slightly ajar, works as a strainer.

Make ahead & storage

Batch the base, finish at serving

Batch the 2 stable components days ahead and add fresh orange juice and fresh lemon juice and soda water, to top when you pour.

Add about 27% water to the batch to replace what the ice would otherwise contribute, or it will pour noticeably harsher than a fresh one.

Fresh orange juice:
Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.
Fresh lemon juice:
Fresh citrus loses its aroma within hours and turns dull. Squeeze it on the day.
Soda water, to top:
Carbonated — it goes flat in a bottle, and there is no way to put the fizz back.

What it tastes like

The taste, and what drives it

sweet, sharp, very light, sparkling — a sour-structured drink served long, over ice.

Sweet

Dry → Sweet

Openly sweet, and balanced by something else rather than hidden.

What drives it: Grenadine — carries the most sugar into the glass.

Sharp

Soft → Sharp

Properly sharp. This is the axis the drink is built on.

What drives it: Fresh lemon juice — supplies the acidity.

Very light

Light → Rich

Almost weightless in the mouth — closer to a long soft drink than to a sipper.

What drives it: Pineapple juice — adds most of the weight.

Sparkling

Still → Sparkling

Carbonated, which lifts the aromatics and makes the drink taste drier than its sugar content alone would suggest.

What drives it: Soda water, to top — carries the carbonation.

Delicate

Delicate → Bold

Delicate. Rewards attention rather than demanding it.

What drives it: Pineapple juice — is the most concentrated thing in the glass.

What you smell first

  • Citrus peelLeads

    From Fresh orange juice, Fresh lemon juice, Orange wheel

  • Tropical fruit

    From Pineapple juice

Every aroma here comes from the liquid itself; nothing is layered on top.

How it was worked out

Each reading comes from the recipe's own recorded taste scores combined with what each ingredient contributes, weighted by how much of it is in the glass. Almost everything in this drink has detailed ingredient data behind it.

How balance actually works →

If it isn't right

What goes wrong with this drink, and why

Only the faults this particular recipe is actually prone to — each with the likely cause, the adjustment, and what the adjustment costs you.

  • It's too sweet

    Likely cause
    Grenadine is carrying the sugar here, and it is the easiest thing in the drink to over-pour — syrup clings to a jigger and a "splash" is rarely the same twice.
    What to change
    Cut grenadine by about a third and rebuild. If it is already made, a squeeze of citrus is faster than starting again.
    What that does
    The drink will read sharper as well as less sweet, because the acid stops being balanced. That is usually the intention, but it is a bigger change than it sounds.

  • It's too sour

    Likely cause
    Fresh lemon juice varies more than any other ingredient in the drink. Limes differ by weeks of ripeness, and a sharp one can be half again as acidic as a mild one at the same measure.
    What to change
    Add sweetener a few millilitres at a time rather than diluting — you are correcting a ratio, not a concentration.
    What that does
    Sourness recedes and the drink gains a little weight. Overshoot and you will be reading the too-sweet entry above instead.

  • It tastes weak

    Likely cause
    With no alcohol to carry flavour and no heat to cut through, an alcohol-free drink has to work harder for the same presence — thinness here is almost never a measuring error.
    What to change
    Add acidity or bitterness rather than more fruit. Sweetness is what is usually already too high in a thin mocktail.
    What that does
    The drink gains definition without gaining sugar. It will also read as slightly sharper, which is what 'more presence' usually means in practice.

  • It's gone flat

    Likely cause
    Soda water, to top loses gas to warmth, to agitation and to anything it can nucleate against — pulp, sugar crystals, a dry glass.
    What to change
    Chill the mixer properly, add it last, pour it against the inside wall of the glass, and stir once at most.
    What that does
    The bubbles last, which also makes the drink taste drier — carbonation contributes a real acidity of its own on top of the lift.

  • It's watery

    Likely cause
    Shaking adds water while it chills, and the two cannot be separated. Wet ice from a freezer door, or small cubes, will over-dilute before the drink is properly cold.
    What to change
    Use bigger, drier, colder ice and stop sooner. Chilling the glass first buys you time you would otherwise spend diluting.
    What that does
    More flavour concentration at the same temperature. Under-dilute instead and the drink will taste harsh — this is a target, not a direction.

  • It doesn't smell of anything

    Likely cause
    This drink's aroma comes from citrus peel and tropical fruit, carried in the liquid. Serving it too cold suppresses that: volatile compounds do not leave a very cold drink.
    What to change
    Let it sit for a minute before drinking, and use a glass that narrows towards the rim to concentrate what does escape.
    What that does
    More of the aroma escapes and the drink reads as more intense. The cost is temperature: a drink left to warm also dilutes faster, so this is a trade against how long it stays right.

Taste profile

Sweetness
3/5
Sourness
3/5
Bitterness
0/5
Strength
0/5
Fruitiness
5/5
Freshness
4/5
Creaminess
0/5
Smokiness
0/5

Nutrition & alcohol

Estimate onlyFruit juice sugar varies with ripeness and whether the juice is fresh or from concentrate.
Calories
145 kcal
Sugar
32 g
Carbohydrates
34 g
Alcohol units (UK)
0
US standard drinks
0
ABV
0%
Serving size
300 ml
Show calculation assumptions

Source: Calculated from standard measures

Calorie breakdown: ~0 kcal from alcohol, ~145 kcal from sugar and mixers.

Likely range: 109–181 kcal, reflecting the confidence level above — not a lab-measured figure.

Assumes unsweetened pineapple juice, fresh orange and lemon, and standard grenadine.

These figures are estimates, not laboratory measurements — individual tolerance to alcohol varies. See our responsible drinking guidance.

Variations

  • Ginger Cinderella

    Top with ginger ale rather than soda water and halve the grenadine.

What kind of drink this is

The structure behind the recipe

A shaken build: a sour-structured alcohol-free drink, served long, over ice — sparkling in the mouth.

Sour-structured

Something sour and something sweet held in balance over a base — the structure behind the whole sour family and everything descended from it.

  • Base

    Pineapple juice

  • Modifier

    Fresh orange juice

  • Sour element

    Fresh lemon juice

  • Sweet element

    Grenadine

  • Lengthener

    Soda water, to top

Drinks built this way are collected as the Sour family.

Technique

shaken

Ice is thrown against the liquid and against itself, chipping fragments off and driving air through the mix. Chilling, dilution and aeration all happen at once and cannot be separated.

A lighter, briefly frothy body and a cloudy appearance that settles as it stands. The aeration blunts alcoholic heat, which is why a shaken drink tastes softer than a stirred one of the same strength.

What it ruins: Clarity, and any carbonation. A shaken spirits-only drink arrives cloudy with ice shards floating in it, and shaking anything fizzy is the one rule with no exceptions.

Everything about shaking →How the technique works →

Dilution

During mixing, then strained

Water from ice typically makes up around 30% of the finished drink for a shaken build (commonly 25–35%). Dilution is an ingredient here, not a side effect.

Why dilution is an ingredient →

Served

Long, over ice

Highball glass · 300ml

Served on ice, so it keeps chilling in the glass. A larger, colder, slower drink than the same spirits served straight up.

Texture and aroma

Sparkling

Carbonation lifts aromatics and adds a slight acidity of its own, which is why a long drink can taste drier than its sugar content suggests.

No dedicated aromatic component — what you smell is the spirit itself, which is a deliberate choice in a drink this spare.

Where to go from here

Each of these is here because of something specific about this drink, not as a standard set of links.

Where it comes from

Origin and family

Origin of the Cinderella

A long-established non-alcoholic bar drink recorded in twentieth-century cocktail manuals, generally as pineapple, orange and lemon juice with grenadine and soda. Exact proportions differ between sources, so the ratio here is one reasonable reading of a well-documented format rather than a single authoritative original.

Family

Sour

2 parts spirit · 1 part citrus · 1 part sweetener — shaken, strained, served up or over ice.

Why this works without alcohol

The principles behind this drink, explained properly rather than as a list of substitutions.

Try this next

Questions people ask

Is the Cinderella an old drink?
Yes — it appears in twentieth-century bar manuals as a standard non-alcoholic order, long before anyone used the word mocktail. Exact proportions vary between sources, so the ratio above is one reasonable reading of a well-documented format.
Do I really need to shake it?
Yes. Pineapple juice foams when shaken, and that foam is most of what makes this feel like a cocktail rather than a glass of juice. Twelve to fifteen seconds, hard.
Can I skip the soda?
You can, but it becomes a much heavier drink. The soda is what stops three fruit juices from sitting thickly in the glass — top it last, over ice, and never shake it in.

Use up your ingredients

Bought a bottle just for this? Here's what else it's good for.

Related tools

Scale this for a party

Work out bottles, mixers, ice and total alcohol units for any number of guests.

Recipe confidence

The drink and its ingredients are well documented; the exact ratio varies between published sources, which the provenance note states plainly.

Moderate confidence