Home › Fruit Drinks and Cider › Cherry Foam
Cherry Foam
Mix well with cracked ice, three tablespoonfuls of cherry syrup and one tablespoonful of lemon juice. When thoroughly chilled strain into glass one third full of cracked ice. Add a pinch of bicarbonate of soda. Stir well and decorate with slices of orange or lemon and a cherry.
A soda-fountain formula written for someone standing behind a counter with a shaker, a syrup rail and a carbonated water tap. Read as printed it is short on liquid; the missing element is assumed rather than stated.
- The foam is a chemical reactionThe foam involves a chemical reaction -- The pinch of bicarbonate meets the lemon juice and the acid in the cherry syrup and fizzes. Add it last, stir once or twice, and serve immediately, as the head does not last. Note that the recipe's first line is incomplete as printed, so whether the bicarbonate is the only source of the "foam" cannot be settled from the text.
- Assume carbonated waterPossibly carbonated water -- The text gives no liquid beyond the syrup and lemon juice, and soda water from the fountain tap is the likeliest missing element, though the recipe never says so. Without some added liquid the quantities amount to a syrup shot rather than a drink.
- Cherry syrupThis means the sweetened fountain syrup, not maraschino liqueur and not the thin juice from a jar of cocktail cherries. A commercial soda syrup or a homemade one — cherries cooked with an equal weight of sugar and strained — is the right register.
- Cracked ice, twiceThe ice in the shaker is for chilling and is discarded when you strain; the fresh cracked ice in the glass is for serving. Using the same ice twice waters the drink down.
- Bicarbonate is a seasoning hereA pinch means a pinch — an eighth of a teaspoon at most. More than that and the soapy, mineral taste of soda comes through and the lemon goes dull.
- YieldOne glass. The proportions scale directly, but mix and fizz each serving separately rather than batching.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of American drink books that appeared as national Prohibition came into view, collecting the repertoire of the soda fountain and the temperance bar for home use. The soda fountain had been developing its own vocabulary since the mid-nineteenth century, when pharmacists dispensed carbonated water with flavoring syrups, and "foam" or "fizz" drinks like this one were part of that trade — the bicarbonate also nodded to soda water's origins as a digestive remedy sold by druggists. Cherry was one of the fountain's staple syrups alongside lemon, vanilla and later cola, and the orange slice and speared cherry are the standard fountain garnish of the period.