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Cherry Ade
Fill a glass one half full of cracked ice, pour over four tablespoonfuls of cherry syrup and the strained juice of half a lemon. Fill up the glass with ice-cold water. Decorate with a cherry and serve with straws.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: the whole thing depends on having a good cherry syrup on hand and on the drink being genuinely cold before the water goes in.
- Cherry syrupThe recipe assumes a fountain-style cherry syrup, sweet and thick, and gives no formula for it. Maraschino-jar syrup will stand in; supermarket "cherry syrup" sold for pancakes is thinner and sweeter and may need less lemon to balance.
- QuantitiesFour tablespoonfuls is 1/4 cup, and half a lemon gives about 1 tablespoon of juice. The glass size is not specified.
- Cracked ice, not cubesCracked or crushed ice chills the syrup fast and thins it as it melts, which is the point. Whole cubes leave a slug of undiluted syrup at the bottom; if you use them, stir hard before topping up.
- Order of operationsSyrup and lemon go onto the ice first so they combine while cold, then the water. Adding water first leaves you stirring cold syrup into cold liquid, which is slow work.
- Ice-cold waterWater from the tap will simply melt the ice and dilute the drink. Chill it in advance, or substitute cold soda water for a slightly sharper, fountain-style version.
- YieldOne tall glass. The proportions scale directly for a pitcher — 1/4 cup syrup and the juice of half a lemon per serving — but build it over ice in the glass rather than letting a pitcher sit and dilute.
- The garnishThe book asks only for a cherry and straws; a maraschino is the likely intent.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of non-alcoholic drink books published in the United States around the arrival of national Prohibition, when "on the water wagon" was already common slang for abstaining. Its recipes lean heavily on the vocabulary and technique of the commercial soda fountain, which by the 1910s was a fixture of American drugstores. The -ade suffix, which comes into English via French and appears in lemonade, orangeade, limeade, grapeade and the like, simply signals sweetened fruit and water; a cherry ade is lemonade with cherry syrup carrying most of the flavour and colour. Bottled fruit syrups were a fountain staple, and are often said to have been made at home as well, which is why a book like this can open a recipe by assuming you already have cherry syrup in the pantry.