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Clam Phosphate
Put three tablespoonfuls of clam bouillon into a glass with a little cracked ice. Fill up with cold soda water, add a dash of phosphate, and a little salt. Decorate with a slice of lemon.
A soda-fountain savory, built the way a fruit phosphate was built, with clam broth standing in for syrup. Everything in it is still obtainable, though two ingredients need translating.
- Acid phosphateThe "dash of phosphate" is acid phosphate, a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold by the gallon to fountains for its dry, mineral tartness. It is still made for cocktail and soda work; a dash is roughly 1/4 teaspoon. Lemon juice is not a substitute — it is sour but not saline, and the point of phosphate is sharpness without fruit flavor.
- Clam bouillonNot a bouillon cube. This is the strained liquor from steamed clams, which today means bottled clam juice. Bottled clam juice can be quite salty, so taste before adding the salt at the end; you may well want to skip it.
- Soda waterA fountain drew this from a carbonated-water tap under pressure. Use the coldest, freshest seltzer you have and pour down the side of the glass to keep the gas in.
- Cracked ice, not cubesCracked ice chills faster and dilutes faster, which is what a fountain drink assumes. Too much and the broth turns to salty water within a minute.
- QuantityThree tablespoons of broth topped up with soda makes one serving. It is a mouthful of savory tonic, not a soup.
- Drink it immediatelyClam broth and carbonation part company quickly, and the drink goes flat and faintly muddy within a few minutes. There is nothing to be gained by making it ahead.
Clam juice was serious business at the American soda fountain in the years before Prohibition. Fountains sold hot and cold clam broth, clam bouillon with celery salt, and clam lemonades alongside the sweet syrups, and books of fountain formulas grouped them with beef broth and malted milk under headings like "invalid drinks" — restoratives for people who could not or should not take alcohol, and, increasingly, for people who could. A salty, sour, cold, effervescent drink handed over a marble counter may well have appealed as the dry man's answer to a bracer at the bar, and the clam broth carried the same claims of strengthening the weak stomach that beef tea did. Acid phosphate, the sour agent here, was a druggist's preparation before it was a beverage ingredient, promoted from the 1870s onward as a nerve tonic; fountains adopted it because it gave a clean acidity that did not compete with flavoring, and it survives today largely because bartenders went looking for the old fountain formulas.