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Hudson Phosphate
Put two tablespoonfuls of pineapple syrup into a glass with two teaspoonfuls of raspberry syrup, a few drops of lemon juice, and two dashes of acid phosphate. Fill up with Vichy.
A soda-fountain phosphate, built in the glass and topped with sparkling mineral water. Nothing here is difficult, but three of the four ingredients need translating.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a souring agent that adds tartness without fruit flavour. It is still made for exactly this purpose and is what gives the drink its dry, mineral bite; lemon juice alone will not stand in for it.
- A dashAt the fountain a dash came from a stoppered dasher bottle and was never a fixed measure; by the usual modern reckoning it is about 1/8 teaspoon, so two dashes is roughly 1/4 teaspoon, a sensible starting point for a 10 to 12 oz glass.
- VichyNaturally carbonated alkaline mineral water, once dispensed from its own fountain draught. Any well-carbonated mineral water works; a bicarbonate-rich water gives the faint saline edge the original had, plain seltzer gives a cleaner, sharper drink.
- The syrupsFountain syrups were heavy, often in the region of 2 lb sugar to 1 pint of water, though manuals differ; either way far heavier than modern squash or cordial. If you use a commercial fruit syrup thinned for coffee drinks, increase the pineapple to three tablespoons or the drink will read as watery.
- Glass and iceThe recipe gives no glass size. Assume a 10 to 12 oz soda glass, syrups and acid in the bottom, ice added, then filled with the Vichy poured down the side to keep the gas. Stir once, no more.
- Order mattersAdd the acid phosphate to the syrups before the carbonated water, as the recipe's own order implies. Acid dropped onto an already-charged glass will foam up, the more so with a bicarbonate water like Vichy.
- YieldOne drink. Scaling it into a pitcher does not work, since the whole point is the fresh charge of gas in each glass.
Phosphates were the workhorse of the American soda fountain from the 1870s into the 1930s, a cheaper and faster cousin of the ice-cream soda: syrup, acid phosphate, carbonated water, no cream and no egg. Acid phosphate was promoted first as a tonic, part of the long nineteenth-century enthusiasm for phosphorus as a nerve food, and only afterwards settled into its real role as the fountain's souring agent, doing for a sweet syrup what lemon does for a cocktail. This particular formula can reasonably be placed within a genre of fountain manuals published as the temperance movement gathered force, when druggists and confectioners were being sold on the idea that the soda counter could replace the bar; a drink built on Vichy water, with its medicinal reputation, sat comfortably on both sides of that argument. The pairing of pineapple with raspberry looks characteristic of the period's fountain flavour logic, though it is worth treating as inference rather than documented practice that a bright acid fruit would be propped up by a red syrup for colour as much as taste.