Beverages: Stir

Three soda-fountain style drinks, printed one after another. The first is missing its ingredient list — the page picks up mid-recipe — so read it as a method for a chocolate-coffee syrup rather than a complete formula.

• The missing listThe opening drink calls for chocolate, hot coffee, sugar, water and vanilla in unstated amounts. A workable reading is 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, 1 cup strong hot coffee, 1 cup sugar and enough water to bring the boiled, strained syrup to 1 quart, with a teaspoon of vanilla stirred in cold. Treat those figures as a reconstruction, not the original.
• Chocolate meant a solid blockIn this period "the chocolate" would generally mean chocolate sold in wrapped cakes or blocks rather than powder or chips, and since the recipe adds its own sugar, unsweetened baking chocolate is the closest modern stand-in. Cocoa powder was also available and would behave differently.
• Boil clear and strainThis is the hinge of the first drink. The syrup must boil until the chocolate solids are fully dispersed and the liquid looks glossy rather than muddy, then go through a fine sieve or cloth to catch grit. Skip the straining and the glasses will silt.
• Add vanilla off the heatThe recipe is explicit that vanilla goes in when the syrup is cold. Vanilla extract is alcohol-based and its aroma is volatile, so much of it is lost if it goes into hot syrup.
• Orange syrupThe drug-store product referred to was a soda-fountain flavouring syrup, which is why a pharmacy is named as the source. Bottled orange syrup for coffee and soda is the direct modern equivalent; the maceration method given — sliced oranges left in sugar until they give up their juice — takes several hours and yields a cloudier, fresher syrup.
• Two cupfuls of sugar in a quartThe orange coffee is very sweet by current taste; a third to a half that sugar gives a less syrupy drink.
• Partially whipped creamCream whipped only to the point where it thickens and just holds a trail from the whisk. It will sink into the coffee and marble it rather than sitting on top as stiff cream would.
• Black currantsBlack-currant juice was hard to find in the United States for much of the twentieth century, when currant cultivation was restricted because the plants host white pine blister rust. It is widely available again as bottled juice or unsweetened cassis syrup; British or Polish imports are the usual sources.
• Weak green teaBrew light — about half the usual leaf, water off the boil, two minutes — so the tea carries the currant rather than fighting it with tannin. Chill hard; the drink is flat at room temperature.
• YieldThe first two recipes come out at roughly a quart of base, about four tall glasses once ice and cream are counted; the black-currant cup, a quart of tea plus a pint of juice, makes about half again as much.