Cream Soda
One pound of loaf sugar, one pint of rich cream, one quart of water, one tablespoon of vanilla and one-quarter of an ounce of tartaric acid. Mix the ingredi-. ents and bring slowly to a boil, then put in jars. Use a tablespoon of this and a third of a teaspoon of soda to a glass of cold water.-M. F. Snider.
This is a bottled soda-fountain syrup: a sweetened cream base kept in jars, then activated in the glass with bicarbonate of soda. The chemistry of the fizz is sound; the storage is not.
- Why it failsA pint of cream boiled with sugar and water and then simply "put in jars" is a low-acid dairy product held at room temperature with no processing time, no sealing method and no temperature given. Bringing it slowly to a boil pasteurises nothing reliably and kills no spores; the jars are not sterilised, not vented and not heat-processed.
- The acid does not preserve itA quarter ounce of tartaric acid across roughly six cups of liquid is there chiefly to react with the bicarbonate at the moment of serving. Whatever acidity it contributes to the jar is unmeasured and buffered by the cream, and it is no substitute for heat processing; it should not be relied on to keep the syrup safe.
- No shelf life is statedThe recipe gives no indication of how long the jars keep or where they are meant to sit. A nineteenth-century pantry with a cool cellar and daily use is a different object from a modern cupboard, and dairy spoilage in a sugar syrup is not always announced by smell before it is dangerous. Use a current, tested soda syrup recipe instead.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in solid cones or blocks, broken up and crushed for use. It was the purest sugar available and is the ancestor of the modern cube; plain granulated sugar is its direct equivalent by weight.
- Tartaric acidA crystalline fruit acid, still sold for winemaking and confectionery. In period soda recipes it stands in for the carbonic acid of a fountain: combined with bicarbonate in water it releases carbon dioxide and gives the drink its lift and its sour edge.
- "Soda"Bicarbonate of soda, that is, modern baking soda. Not washing soda.
- The proportions in the glassA tablespoon of syrup and a third of a teaspoon of bicarbonate to a tumbler of cold water is a strong dose of alkali by present taste, and the fizz collapses within a minute or two of mixing. Home carbonation has made the whole acid-and-soda approach obsolete.
Before bottled soft drinks, fizz was made at the point of service: a druggist's fountain forced carbon dioxide into water, and a household without one improvised by combining an acid and a bicarbonate in the glass. The name cream soda is sometimes explained by the cream present in syrups of this type, and sometimes by the cream of tartar used in others; by the later nineteenth century many commercial versions had dropped the dairy and kept only the vanilla character that the name still carries. Recipes like this one, printed over a contributor's name, are typical of cookbooks assembled from readers' correspondence.