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Atlantic City Shake
Put into a shaker two tablespoonfuls of coffee syrup, one tablespoonful of cream, one tablespoonful of vanilla syrup, and six tablespoonfuls of milk. Shake well, and pour into a glass which is half full of cracked ice. Add more milk to fill glass and serve with straws.
A soda-fountain drink from the era when the fountain replaced the bar. Everything hinges on the two syrups, which were fountain staples then and are specialty items now.
- Coffee syrupA sweetened coffee concentrate, still made commercially in Rhode Island and easy to find online. If you substitute, use a strong cold-brew concentrate with sugar dissolved into it rather than plain brewed coffee, or the drink will be thin and sour.
- Vanilla syrupFountain vanilla syrup was generally sugar syrup flavoured with vanilla extract; a modern coffee-bar vanilla syrup will do. One tablespoon is the sweetener as much as the flavouring here.
- Total volumeTwo tablespoons syrup, one of cream, one of vanilla syrup and six of milk comes to about two-thirds of a cup before the ice and the topping-off. Expect a single drink in a 10 to 12 oz glass.
- CreamPeriod "cream" at a fountain was probably closer to what we call light cream, around 18 to 20 percent fat; half-and-half is lighter but will pass. Heavy cream works but makes the shake heavier than intended.
- Cracked iceThe recipe specifies cracked, which is broken-up ice rather than crushed; crushed melts faster and will water the drink down as you go.
- Shake, then pour over iceThe recipe puts the ice in the glass, not the shaker, so the syrups and milk are shaken without dilution.
- Section headingThe recipe sits under "Chocolate" in the original but contains none; add a tablespoon of chocolate syrup if you want it to earn the heading.
Books like this one appeared in quantity around the arrival of national Prohibition, when soda fountains, drugstore counters and hotel lobbies took over trade the saloons lost, and "water wagon" is the temperance idiom for having sworn off drink. Atlantic City was then at the height of its boardwalk years, and place names were a common enough way to dress up a house drink, much as Manhattans and Bronxes did on the other side of the counter. Coffee syrup, the distinctive element here, was a New England fountain staple and survives mainly in Rhode Island, where coffee milk made with it is the state drink. The instruction to serve with straws is a reminder that the paper drinking straw was itself a fountain-age product, sold by the box to counters like this one.