Maple Syrup
Dissolve five pounds of maple syrup, and one pound of glucose in one quart of water. Bring to a boil and color with caramel. Keep in bottles. To serve, put four tablespoonfuls of the syrup into a tall glass, add the same amount of cream, and fill up the glass with carbonated water. A grating of nutmeg may be added.
This is a soda-fountain bottling formula: a maple syrup stretched with glucose and water, then drawn off four spoonfuls at a time into a cream soda. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions read oddly to a cook used to buying syrup by the bottle.
- "Dissolve" is a loose word hereMaple syrup is already a liquid; what is meant is that the glucose should be stirred into the syrup and water until fully incorporated. Warm the water first and the glucose will go in without fighting you.
- GlucoseFountain glucose was thick corn-derived glucose syrup, sold in tins. Light corn syrup is the direct modern equivalent. It adds body, helps keep the finished syrup from throwing sugar crystals in the bottle, and stretches the maple; it is less sweet than sugar.
- Weights, not volumesFive pounds of maple syrup is roughly 58 fl oz, a little under a half gallon. A pound of glucose is about 1 1/3 cups. Weigh both if you can; the recipe gives both by weight.
- CaramelThis means caramel colouring — sugar cooked to near-black and let down with water — added by the drop for depth of colour, not flavour. Modern maple syrup is already dark enough that most people will skip it.
- Boil brieflyBring it to a boil to dissolve the glucose, then stop. Prolonged boiling drives off water, thickens the syrup past pouring consistency and dulls the maple aroma, which is volatile.
- KeepingA fountain went through this in days. Without that turnover, bottle it hot into clean bottles, refrigerate, and use within a few weeks; the sugar content is high but not high enough to be considered shelf-stable in a warm kitchen.
- YieldAbout three quarts of syrup, which at four tablespoons (2 fl oz) a glass gives roughly four dozen drinks.
- Building the glassSyrup and cream first, stirred together, then the carbonated water poured down the side of the glass to keep the head. Cold cream and hard-charged soda water matter more than anything else in the assembly.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of soda-fountain formularies published in the years when the temperance movement was pushing hard toward national prohibition — the title is period slang for going teetotal. It is a home drinks collection, supplying syrups, phosphates and creams for people making their own alternatives to the saloon. Maple was a natural fountain flavour in the United States: domestic, cheap in the northeast, and strongly associated with wholesomeness. The glucose in the formula tells you the commercial logic plainly — it extends expensive maple, adds mouthfeel, and prevents crystallisation in a bottle standing under a marble counter. The categories themselves were fluid, and the same maple syrup would be poured over ice cream on one page and into a glass of cream and soda on the next.