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Arctic Nectar
Put a lemon ice in a glass and pour over it one bottle of plain soda.
A two-line soda-fountain formula that assumes equipment and stock a 1910s drugstore had on hand. The whole thing depends on what "lemon ice" and "plain soda" meant at the counter.
- Lemon ice is sorbet, not ice creamA water ice: lemon juice, sugar syrup and water, frozen, with no dairy at all. The recipe gives no quantity; a single scoop of roughly 3 oz suits one glass.
- Plain sodaUnflavoured, unsweetened carbonated water from a siphon or a small bottle, roughly 6 to 8 fl oz. Modern club soda or seltzer works; tonic water and lemon-lime sodas are already sweetened and will make the drink cloying.
- Glass sizeUse a 12 oz soda glass or tall tumbler. Ice plus a full bottle of soda in anything smaller may foam over the rim.
- Pour techniqueTilt the glass and run the soda down the side in a slow stream rather than dropping it onto the ice. Fast pouring onto frozen syrup throws up a head of foam and flattens the drink before it reaches the table.
- SweetnessWater ices carried a fair amount of sugar. If your sorbet is tart, an ounce of simple syrup or lemon syrup in the bottom of the glass first will suit the drink better.
- Yield and serviceOne drink. Serve at once with a long spoon and a straw; the ice melts into the soda within a few minutes and the drink is meant to be half eaten, half drunk.
Books like this one belong to a period when "on the water wagon" was current slang for having sworn off drink and publishers issued whole collections of fountain drinks to prove abstinence need not be dull. The formula itself is standard drugstore practice: American soda fountains had been combining carbonated water with syrups since the 1830s and with ices and ice creams from about the 1870s, and by 1900 the dispenser worked from short memorised formulas exactly like this one. "Arctic Nectar" is a fountain name rather than a traditional dish name -- soda men gave their combinations extravagant titles to sell them from a menu board.