Banana Syrup
One half ounce of essence of banana, two quarts of plain syrup, and a few drops of lemon extract. Mix well and bottle.
A soda-fountain flavoring syrup rather than a finished drink: two quarts of stock syrup carrying enough banana flavor to dose sundaes and sodas by the ounce.
- "Plain syrup"In fountain practice this is the house stock syrup, made much heavier than a modern simple syrup; period fountain formulas commonly run to a dozen pounds or more of sugar per gallon of water. That density is part of what keeps the bottle from fermenting and what lets a single ounce flavor a whole glass.
- Half an ounceA half fluid ounce is one tablespoon. Against two quarts of syrup that is a very small proportion, and it assumes the concentrated fountain essences of the period.
- Modern banana extract is not the same strengthCommercial banana flavorings vary widely in potency. Add half the tablespoon, taste a diluted sample in cold soda water or over ice cream, then bring it up. Banana flavor turns cloying and solvent-like quickly and cannot be pulled back out.
- The lemon is structuralThe lemon -- "A few drops" of lemon extract is not decoration; it lifts the banana rather than letting it read as flat and perfumed. Note that lemon extract is citrus oil in alcohol, so what it adds is aroma, not acidity, and "a few drops" means literally that across the full two quarts.
- MixingFlavor oils and alcohol-based essences will streak in cold syrup. Stir thoroughly at room temperature, or warm the syrup slightly, so the flavor is evenly distributed before bottling — otherwise the first glasses drawn are far stronger than the last.
- Yield and useTwo quarts is a fountain-scale batch, about sixty-four one-ounce servings. Scale to a pint unless you are working a party. Use roughly 1 to 1½ oz over ice cream, or the same into a glass topped with soda water.
- StorageA full-strength fountain syrup keeps for months in a clean capped bottle at room temperature. If you make it with a lighter modern simple syrup, treat it as a perishable and refrigerate it; thinner sugar solutions grow mold and yeast within weeks.
Fountain syrups like this one reflect soda-counter economics: one bulk kettle of sugar syrup, decanted and flavored a bottle at a time, so a single dispenser could offer many flavors without as many separate preparations. Fresh bananas only became a common American sight after the steamship and rail trade of the 1880s and 1890s brought Central American fruit north in quantity, and the flavoring here is not fruit at all but an essence - the ester generally identified as amyl acetate, long sold to confectioners and fountain men precisely because it survived syrup and cold storage in a way pulped banana never did. A book of fountain formulas circulating under a title invoking Uncle Sam's water wagon may well belong to the temperance-adjacent moment when the soda counter was pitched as a respectable alternative to the bar.