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Banana Cream
Mix two tablespoonfuls of sweet cream with two tablespoonfuls of vanilla syrup and one half of a banana thinly sliced. Add a spoonful of ice cream and shake well. Pour into a glass without straining, add cold milk and a spoonful of whipped cream.
A soda-fountain milkshake from the first year of national Prohibition, written for someone standing behind a marble counter with syrup pumps and a shaker at hand. It scales easily to a single tall glass at home.
- Vanilla syrupFountain vanilla syrup was a heavy sugar syrup flavored with vanilla, commonly somewhere around two parts sugar to one part water. To approximate it, dissolve 1 cup sugar in 1/2 cup hot water and stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla once cool; commercial coffee-bar vanilla syrup also works.
- Quantities and glassTwo tablespoons of cream plus two of syrup is a fountain base, not the whole drink; the recipe leaves the milk unmeasured. Roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of cold milk will fill a tall glass and serve one.
- "A spoonful of ice cream"Probably a small dipper's worth, on the order of 1/4 cup of plain vanilla. It is there for body and chill rather than sweetness, so a lean, unstabilized ice cream suits it better than a rich premium brand.
- Shaking, not blendingThe banana is meant to break down against the ice cream in a metal shaker, leaving visible flecks. A blender will pulverize it into a uniform puree, which is a different drink; if you use one, pulse two or three times only.
- Why it is poured unstrainedThe instruction is explicit: pour the banana pieces through into the glass rather than holding them back in the shaker.
- Work quicklySliced banana browns within minutes and turns the drink grey-beige. Slice it directly into the shaker and serve as soon as the cream is on top.
- Whipped creamCream whipped to soft peaks with no sugar; the syrup already sweetens the drink. Anything stiffer will sit on the surface like a lid.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon appeared in 1919, as the Eighteenth Amendment was ratified and the soda fountain was being promoted, half in earnest and half in resignation, as the American bar's replacement. Its title is a joke about climbing on the wagon, and its contents are the professional dispenser's repertoire: syrups, phosphates, egg drinks, milkshakes and ciders, written in fountain shorthand. Banana Cream belongs to a family of "cream" drinks that used sweet cream and a flavoring syrup as the base, with ice cream added for thickness. Bananas were newly ordinary in American cities by then, cheap year-round imports from Central America carried on refrigerated steamers, and fountain men used them heavily in shakes and splits precisely because the fruit was reliable and needed no preparation beyond a knife.