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Chocolate Ice-Cream Soda
Put a small portion of ice-cream in tumbler, add two tablespoons chocolate syrup, and fill glass with ice-cold soda water, drawn from syphon.
A three-ingredient soda-fountain drink that depends entirely on temperature and order of assembly. The chocolate syrup is the Walter Baker house syrup given elsewhere in the book, not a modern squeeze-bottle sauce.
- The tumblerThe recipe specifies only a tumbler and 'a small portion of ice-cream', leaving both the glass size and the quantity to the reader; enough room must be left for the foam.
- Chocolate syrupThe recipe calls simply for chocolate syrup. A modern equivalent is a thin, pourable chocolate sauce rather than a thick fudge sauce, which will sink and sit.
- Syphon sodaA syphon delivered plain carbonated water under pressure; the recipe insists it be ice-cold. Well-chilled seltzer or club soda works; tonic and mineral waters do not, as their added flavourings fight the chocolate.
- TemperatureEverything should be as cold as possible, glass included. Warm soda water loses its gas the moment it meets the ice cream and the drink goes flat and slack.
- YieldOne glass. Multiply as needed, but assemble each one to order rather than in advance.
Walter Baker & Co. of Dorchester, Massachusetts, one of the oldest chocolate firms in the United States, published its Choice Recipes booklets as advertising for its cocoa and baking chocolate, gathering contributions from well-known cooking-school teachers of the day. The inclusion of a soda-fountain drink alongside cakes and puddings reflects how central the drugstore fountain had become by the turn of the twentieth century: carbonated water was first sold as a health tonic in American pharmacies, and flavoured syrups followed, with chocolate among the earliest and most popular. The ice-cream soda is generally traced to Philadelphia in the 1870s, and by the time this booklet appeared the combination of syrup, ice cream and syphon water was so familiar that three lines of instruction were considered sufficient.