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Soda-Water, Milk And
Heat nearly to boiling a tea-cupful of milk, and dissolve in it a tea-spoonful of refined sugar; put it into a large tumbler, and pour over it two-thirds of a bottle of soda-water. This is an excellent mode of taking milk when the stomach is charged with acid, and consequently apt to feel oppressed by milk alone.
A Victorian invalid drink: hot sweetened milk lengthened with soda-water. It takes two minutes and the only real decisions are quantity and temperature.
- A tea-cupfulVictorian teacups ran small, roughly 5 to 6 fl oz rather than the 8 oz of a modern mug. Use about 2/3 cup of milk and you will be close to the original proportion.
- A bottle of soda-waterBottles of the period were small by modern standards, so two-thirds of one is only a few fluid ounces, perhaps 4 or 5. A 12 oz can of modern seltzer is more than a whole Victorian bottle; measure rather than pour by eye or the milk disappears.
- Soda-water is not what it wasSome nineteenth-century soda-water contained sodium bicarbonate or other alkaline salts, though much of it by this date was simply carbonated water. Plain carbonated water today contains only dissolved carbon dioxide and is very slightly acidic, so the drink is refreshing but not antacid.
- Refined sugarWhite sugar as opposed to the coarser, damper, brown-tinged household sugars also on sale; in this period refined sugar usually meant loaf or lump sugar rather than granulated. A teaspoonful in 2/3 cup of milk is lightly sweet.
- Heat, then combine off the heatBring the milk to just below a simmer, when it steams and trembles at the edges, and dissolve the sugar there. Do not add the soda-water to the pan: carbonation is lost instantly in a hot vessel and the milk may boil over.
- Use a large tumbler for a reasonHot milk plus carbonated water foams up hard and briefly. A 12 oz glass or larger, and pouring the soda down the side, keeps it in the glass.
- YieldOne glass, about 10 fl oz. Drink it at once; it separates and flattens within a few minutes.
This belongs to the large Victorian literature of invalid and sickroom cookery, where the sufferer of "acidity" or dyspepsia was a standing figure and milk was the standard bland nourishment. Artificial soda-water dates from the late eighteenth century and by the 1860s was cheap and widely bottled; some such waters are said to have contained bicarbonate of soda rather than carbon dioxide alone, which may be why household books treated the drink as a mild medicine as much as a refreshment. Milk was widely believed to "curdle" and oppress a sour stomach, so mixing it with an alkaline aerated water was a logical remedy by the physiology of the day. The note is offered as a piece of practical dietary advice, of the same family as barley water, whey and beef tea.