Milk Shake
To one third glass of cracked ice, add two thirds glass of milk, sweetened with any fruit syrup, or with a plain sugar syrup flavored with vanilla or orange flower water. Shake well before serving.
A soda-fountain milk shake from before ice cream entered the formula: milk, ice, syrup, shaken. The proportions are given by glass rather than by cup, so read them as ratios.
- The measure"Glass" here is the mixing glass of a soda fountain rather than a cup measure. If you take it as around 12 ounces, one third cracked ice and two thirds milk comes to roughly 4 oz ice and 8 oz milk, a single drink; the recipe itself gives only the ratio.
- Cracked ice, not cubesCracked ice is cubes broken into rough pea-to-thumbnail pieces, which chill and aerate far faster than whole cubes. Wrap cubes in a towel and strike them with a rolling pin, or pulse briefly in a blender. Crushed ice or slush will water the drink down.
- Fruit syrup quantityThe original leaves the sweetening entirely to taste. Start with about 1 oz (2 tablespoons) of syrup per drink and adjust.
- Plain sugar syrupEqual weights sugar and water, heated only until clear, then cooled. Flavor after cooling so the vanilla or flower water does not cook off.
- Orange flower waterStill sold in Middle Eastern groceries and baking aisles as orange blossom water. It is potent; a scant quarter teaspoon per drink is plenty, and more turns the milk soapy.
- ShakingShake hard for 15 to 20 seconds, until the outside of the shaker frosts, then pour ice and all into the serving glass. Longer shaking only dilutes it.
- What it is notThis produces a thin, frothy, cold drink, not the thick spoon-standing shake of a modern diner. If you want that, you are looking for a recipe with ice cream in it.
The shake described here is the older sense of the word: milk, ice and flavored syrup agitated in a tin, sold at drugstore fountains alongside phosphates and egg drinks. Milk shakes became thick and ice-cream-based as mechanical spindle mixers and better freezer cabinets spread through American fountains in the early decades of the twentieth century, which is why a recipe of this kind reaches for cracked ice instead. Orange flower water, distilled from bitter orange blossom, was used as a fountain flavoring and is a survivor from much older confectionery practice, where it did the perfuming work that vanilla extract later took over.