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Auditorium Cooler
Into a glass pitcher put one teaspoonful of powdered sugar, the juice of half a lemon, one bottle of ginger ale, and two small pieces of ice. Stir until cold, and serve in glasses decorated with pieces of lemon.
A two-minute pitcher drink from the era when the soda fountain was the respectable alternative to the bar. A few notes on scale and proportion.
- Yield"One bottle" is unspecified, and ginger ale of this period was sold in a range of sizes, small splits of roughly 6 to 8 ounces among them; on that reading the pitcher serves one or two. Modern single-serve bottles and cans are larger, so for a group, multiply by the number of drinkers rather than treating a 1-litre bottle as a single unit.
- Powdered sugarIn American books of this date this usually means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Either dissolves in the lemon juice, but superfine caster sugar is the closer match and will not cloud the glass.
- SweetnessMany commercial ginger ales today are sweeter than some of the styles sold when this was written, though period products varied from sweet golden ales to pale dry ones. Taste before adding the sugar; the half lemon may be all the correction the drink needs.
- Stirring carbonationStir only until the sugar dissolves and the pitcher is cold. Prolonged stirring drives off the carbonation that is the whole point of the drink.
- The iceTwo small pieces means chilling ice, not serving ice. Chill the pitcher and glasses first, or use large cubes that melt slowly, otherwise the drink waters down before it reaches the table.
- GarnishThe recipe asks only for pieces of lemon; wheels or half-wheels on the rim suit it. Squeezing a strip of peel over the surface first will add citrus oil, though the printed recipe does not call for it.
History: The name suggests a hotel or hall, in the pattern of drinks christened after the houses that served them, though no attribution is given in the recipe itself. Ginger ale carried a particular cultural weight in the years before national Prohibition: it was fizzy, adult in appearance, and could be handed to a guest in a stemmed glass without comment, which made it a mainstay of the alcohol-free bar. Collections of such formulas were published in the United States in this period, most built on the same three moves seen here — an acid, a sweetener, and something carbonated — a structure that echoes the sours and fizzes of the saloon with the spirit left out.