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Fruit Favorite
Take the juice of half a lemon and the juice of half an orange, add a little cherry juice and three tablespoonfuls of plain syrup. Put into a shaker with cracked ice, a little cold water, and shake well. Pour into a tall glass. Decorate with water cress and a cherry.
A soda-fountain style shaken lemonade from the era of alcohol-free drink books. It comes together in two minutes, but a few of its terms and proportions need translating.
- Plain syrupSimple sugar syrup, sugar dissolved in water over heat only until clear, then cooled; fountain versions were often heavier than the modern equal-parts mix. Three tablespoons is quite sweet against the juice of half a lemon and half an orange, so taste and pull it back to two if your oranges are ripe.
- Cherry juiceAt a soda fountain this most likely meant the sweet red syrup from a jar of maraschino cherries rather than fresh or unsweetened juice. A teaspoon or two of jar syrup gives a red colour and candy note; unsweetened tart cherry juice will read as sour instead.
- Cracked iceCracked ice, not cubes: it chills and dilutes at once, which is why the recipe adds only "a little cold water." Shake hard for ten to fifteen seconds, then pour into the tall glass as directed.
- Watercress as garnishThe recipe finishes the glass with a sprig of watercress and a cherry. Rinse it well and use it as a garnish only; mint is the easier modern substitute if the peppery note bothers you.
- YieldOne tall glass, roughly 8 to 10 oz once the ice and water are in.
This belongs to a genre of American drink books published in the years when the temperance movement was gaining ground and national Prohibition was in sight: collections assembled to show that a host could entertain without spirits. Many such recipes came out of the working repertoire of the drugstore soda fountain, which is why the ingredient list reads like a fountain man's shelf rather than a home pantry: cherry syrup by the jar, plain syrup in a pump bottle, cracked ice. Soda fountains did expand sharply in this period, and by 1920 they had taken over a good deal of the social business of the bar.