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Columbia Phosphate
Pour four tablespoonfuls of pineapple syrup into a glass half filled with cracked ice. Add three dashes of acid phosphate, and enough soda water to fill glass, using the syphon. Stir well and serve.
A soda-fountain phosphate: sweet syrup, a sour agent, ice and charged water, built in the glass. The whole thing takes under a minute once you have the components.
- Acid phosphate is the pointThis is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold specifically for soda fountains. It gives a dry, mineral tartness with none of the fruit flavour of lemon juice. It is still manufactured for bartenders and is not interchangeable with citric acid, though citric will at least keep the drink from being cloying.
- Three dashesA fountain dash from a dasher-top bottle is roughly 1/8 teaspoon, so three dashes is about 1/4 to 3/8 teaspoon. Modern acid phosphate bottles vary in strength; start at 1/4 teaspoon and adjust by taste rather than by count.
- Four tablespoonfuls of syrupThat is 2 fluid ounces, a normal fountain measure, though the recipe does not state the glass size. Fountain fruit syrups were generally heavy sugar syrups, flavoured and strained; a thick commercial syrup is the nearest ready substitute, but check the density.
- Cracked ice, not cubesCracked ice chills faster and lets the carbonated water thread through it. Cubes leave the syrup sitting in a sweet layer at the bottom. Half a glass of ice is correct.
- The syphonA seltzer syphon delivers water under pressure, which is what does the mixing. A soda maker or a fresh bottle of unflavoured seltzer works; pour down the side of the glass and stir once, briefly, or you will lose the carbonation you just paid for.
- Serve at onceMakes one drink. A phosphate is meant to be handed across the counter and drunk immediately; it goes flat and syrupy within a few minutes.
Phosphates were a fixture of the American drugstore soda fountain from the late nineteenth century into the 1930s, when a druggist dispensing carbonated water was still nominally in the business of health as much as refreshment. Acid phosphate was sold as a tonic preparation before it settled into its role as the sour note in fountain drinks, and the tartness it gave was often claimed to be more digestible and less "heating" than fruit acid. Books of this sort gathered hundreds of syrup-and-soda formulas for a fountain counter pitched as the respectable alternative to the bar. Pineapple syrup reflects the period's enthusiasm for canned and preserved tropical fruit, which reached ordinary American counters in quantity after Hawaiian canning scaled up in the early twentieth century.