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Lime and Lemon Phosphate
Put two tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup into a glass of soda water with a little cracked ice, add one teaspoonful of lime juice and a dash of orange flower water. Mix well and pour in carefully one tablespoonful of grape juice, so that it will float on top.
A soda-fountain drink built in the glass, and the only technical demand is the grape juice float at the end. Everything else is measuring.
- The float is the whole pointPour the tablespoon of grape juice slowly over the back of a spoon held just above the surface so it sits as a purple layer on the pale drink. Tip it in directly and you get a uniformly muddy glass that tastes the same but looks like nothing.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was a standing item behind the counter; bottled lemon syrups do exist today but vary widely in strength. Make your own by dissolving 2 cups sugar in 1 cup water, cooling, then stirring in about 1/2 cup strained lemon juice; refrigerated, it should keep a week or two. Bottled lemonade concentrate is weaker and will leave the drink thin.
- Soda waterPlain unflavored seltzer or club soda, as cold and as freshly opened as possible. "A glass" is left unspecified; something in the 6 to 8 oz range suits the quantities given.
- Orange flower waterStill sold, usually in Middle Eastern groceries and better supermarkets. A "dash" is imprecise; a few drops is a safe reading. Strengths vary considerably between brands, and too much reads as soap.
- Where is the phosphateA true phosphate took a few drops of acid phosphate, a diluted phosphoric acid solution the fountain kept alongside the syrups, for a dry mineral tartness. This version leans on lime juice instead. If you want the period flavor, acid phosphate is again sold by cocktail suppliers; a quarter teaspoon is plenty.
- Cracked iceCracked, as the recipe specifies, rather than cubed or crushed. Crushed ice will melt faster and dilute the drink.
- Grape juiceUnsweetened Concord is closest to what 1910s households bought. Use juice rather than a grape cordial or syrup, which is heavier and sweeter; the layer depends chiefly on pouring slowly and gently, and it will not hold for long.
- YieldOne glass. Serve immediately, with a straw and a long spoon, and let the drinker stir the float in.
Books of this kind belong to the years when American soft-drink recipes were being written down in earnest for home use, as temperance sentiment hardened into the national Prohibition that arrived in 1920. What the home cook was really being taught was the soda fountain's repertoire: a base syrup, charged water, a flavoring accent, and a garnish, assembled in a fixed order. "Phosphate" as a drink name comes from acid phosphate, the diluted phosphoric acid dispensers kept to give sweet syrups a sharp edge, and the word seems in time to have loosened to mean almost any tart syrup-and-soda combination whether or not the acid was in it. The orange flower water is the tell of an older confectionery tradition, when floral distillates rather than fruit extracts carried perfume in sweets and drinks.