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Cuban Cream
To one pint each of pineapple, vanilla, and lemon syrups, add one half pint of strained honey. Blend well, put four tablespoonfuls into a glass, and add plain cream or ice cream.
This is a soda-fountain formula: you mix a batch of flavored syrup, then build single drinks from it a few tablespoons at a time. Nothing here needs heat.
- What "syrup" meansFountain syrups of the period were heavy sugar syrups, often around two parts sugar to one part water, flavored with fruit juice or extract. Modern bottled coffee or soda syrups are the closest equivalent; thin homemade 1:1 simple syrup will make a noticeably weaker, more watery drink.
- Quantities in cupsA pint is 2 cups, so the base is 2 cups each pineapple, vanilla, and lemon syrup plus 1 cup honey — 7 cups in all, about 112 tablespoons. At four tablespoons per glass that is roughly 28 drinks.
- Straining the honey"Strained honey" simply meant honey with comb, wax, and bee debris filtered out — essentially the liquid honey sold today, as distinct from comb honey. Any liquid honey works; a mild clover or orange-blossom honey will not fight the pineapple the way buckwheat would.
- Getting the honey to blendHoney sinks and stays sunk in cold syrup. Warm it gently, or stir it into a small amount of the syrup first, then combine with the rest and shake in a closed jar.
- "Plain cream"Unwhipped, unsweetened cream, poured cold — not whipped cream. Half a cup or so per glass over the four tablespoons of syrup, stirred; with ice cream, one scoop and the syrup poured over.
- Carbonation is optional and unmentionedThe recipe as written is a still cream drink. If you want the fountain version, top it with cold soda water after the cream and stir once, gently, from the bottom.
- StorageThe finished syrup is sugar-heavy and keeps several weeks refrigerated in a sealed bottle. Shake before each use, since the honey and fruit solids settle.
Books of this kind appeared in quantity in the years around national Prohibition, when "on the water wagon" was current slang for having given up drink and publishers rushed out collections of soda-fountain and household beverages to fill the gap left by the bar — though soda-fountain formularies were already numerous well before 1920. The recipes are drugstore-counter formulas adapted for home use: a batch of compound syrup kept on hand, then dressed with cream, ice cream, or charged water to order. The "Cuban" in the name is often said to come from the pineapple rather than from any Havana original, though this is guesswork. Honey as a partial sweetener may also have been a period touch, promoted both as more wholesome than sugar and as a way to stretch a costly commodity during and after the First World War.