Home › Lemon and Lime › Hot Lemon Pepsin
Hot Lemon Pepsin
To two tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup add one teaspoonful of essence of pepsin and two dashes of acid phosphate. Mix with one cupful of hot water.
A single hot fountain drink, built in the glass the way a soda clerk would have made it in about 1914. Two of the three ingredients are pharmacy stock rather than pantry stock, and one of them is the reason the drink existed at all.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, used at soda fountains to give a dry, tart bite without the fruitiness of citric acid. It is still made for cocktail and fountain work; two dashes is roughly a quarter teaspoon.
- "Two dashes"A dash was one tip of a dasher-top bottle, conventionally reckoned at roughly 1/8 teaspoon, though the actual pour varied with the bottle. Acid phosphate is aggressive, so err low and add more after tasting rather than doubling it up front.
- Essence of pepsinA druggist's preparation of pepsin, the stomach enzyme, in glycerin and dilute acid, sold as a digestive aid. There is no modern grocery equivalent; the drink is perfectly good made without it, in which case it is simply a hot lemon phosphate.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was a heavy sugar syrup flavored with lemon oil and juice, far sweeter than bottled lemonade concentrate. Two tablespoons of a 2:1 sugar syrup with fresh juice and a little zest is the closest home version.
- Hot, not boilingPepsin loses activity well below the boil, and boiling water flashes off the lemon oil that carries most of the aroma. The recipe asks only for hot water, i.e. water at drinking temperature rather than off the boil.
- Order of assemblySyrup, essence and phosphate go into the mug first and the hot water is poured over them, which mixes the drink without a spoon; this is the order the recipe itself gives.
- YieldOne cupful, one serving, meant to be drunk hot and immediately.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the last years before national Prohibition, when the soda fountain was being promoted as the respectable replacement for the saloon bar, and its recipe books borrowed the saloon's vocabulary of dashes, syrups and mixed drinks. The pepsin here is a reminder that the fountain grew out of the drugstore: pepsin, isolated in the nineteenth century and widely sold as a remedy for dyspepsia, turned up in tonics, chewing gum and fountain drinks alike, and a hot drink dosed with it was pitched as something between a beverage and a mild digestive. Acid phosphate, meanwhile, was the fountain's workhorse souring agent, generally traced to the phosphate tonics of the 1870s. Hot drinks like this one filled the slow winter months, when nobody wanted an iced soda but the marble counter still had to earn its keep.