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Cherry Cooler
Fill a glass one half full of cracked ice, pour over two tablespoonfuls of cherry syrup, and enough grape juice to fill glass. Serve with straws.
A two-ingredient soda-fountain pour that depends entirely on the quality of the syrup and juice. Nothing here needs modernising except the ingredients themselves.
- Cherry syrupThis means fountain syrup — a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with cherry, not the thin cordial sold for cocktails today. Grenadine is too pomegranate-forward; a maraschino cherry syrup or a homemade syrup of simmered sour cherries and equal-weight sugar is closer to the intent.
- Grape juiceAt the time this meant unfermented Concord juice of the Welch's type, sweet and strongly foxy in flavour. Modern white grape juice will read as flat and unrecognisable here; use a purple Concord juice.
- Cracked iceCracked ice is ice broken from a block into irregular pieces, larger than crushed but smaller than a cube. Crushed ice will water the drink down as it melts faster; cubes work but chill less quickly.
- BalanceTwo tablespoons of syrup in a glass that is half ice will be quite sweet, since the grape juice is already sugary. Taste and drop to one tablespoon if your syrup is a heavy one.
- Stir itThe book does not say to stir, but syrup sinks. Give it a quick swizzle before the straws go in or the last inch is the whole flavour of the drink.
- YieldOne glass. Scale by the glass rather than mixing a pitcher, as the ice is part of the recipe.
Drinks like this belong to the Prohibition-era soda fountain, and the book's title says as much: to be on Uncle Sam's water wagon was to be dry, by law and by patriotic sentiment, as national prohibition arrived in 1920. Collections of temperance drinks from these years lean heavily on fountain syrups, cracked ice and bottled grape juice, the last of which owed its commercial existence to the unfermented communion-wine trade begun by the Welch family in the 1860s and later marketed hard as a wholesome alternative to wine. Grape juice also had a political association: William Jennings Bryan, as Secretary of State, was widely mocked for serving it at official dinners in place of wine, and the phrase "grape juice diplomacy" stuck. A drink of syrup, ice and grape juice served with straws was thus both a child's treat and a small statement of allegiance.