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Orange and Lemon Phosphate
Mix two tablespoonfuls of orange syrup, two tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup with one teaspoonful of powdered sugar and a dash of acid phosphate. Fill glass one third full of shaved ice and add the fruit juice. Garnish with a slice of orange.
A soda fountain formula from the era when a drugstore counter kept a rack of house-made fruit syrups and a bottle of acid phosphate beside the carbonator. It assumes equipment and stock the original reader had on hand, so a few things are left unsaid.
- The missing stepNo carbonated water is mentioned, but the drink is a phosphate and will not work without it. Fill the glass with soda water after the syrups and phosphate go in, then stir once from the bottom.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a souring agent. It is still made for the cocktail and soda trade; a dash is usually reckoned somewhere between an eighth and a quarter teaspoon. It gives a dry mineral tartness that lemon juice cannot imitate, though lemon juice is the usual substitute.
- Fruit syrupsThese are the fountain's own sweetened syrups flavored with orange and lemon, not modern breakfast juice or bottled cordial. Two tablespoonfuls each is roughly one ounce of each syrup.
- "The fruit juice"The instruction is loose: it refers back to the syrups already measured, not to an additional ingredient. Build over the ice rather than mixing in a separate vessel.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term generally meant finely ground sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar on shelves now. Superfine or caster sugar dissolves cleanly in cold liquid; ordinary granulated will grit.
- Shaved iceShaved, not cubed, so it packs tightly and chills fast. Crushed ice is the practical stand-in.
- YieldOne glass. Scaling up is straightforward, but mix each drink in its own glass or the carbonation goes flat.
Phosphates were the workhorse of the American soda fountain from the 1870s through Prohibition: syrup, a dash of acid phosphate, shaved ice, carbonated water. Acid phosphate came out of the pharmacy side of the business, where phosphoric acid preparations were sold as nerve tonics, and it survived as a flavoring because it sours a sweet drink without adding fruit flavor of its own. A book with a title like On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the temperance publishing of the years before national Prohibition, when "on the water wagon" was current slang for having sworn off drink and collections of fountain drinks were offered as a working substitute for the bar. The orange-and-lemon pairing here is the plainest thing in the genre.