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Orange Shake
Mix one tablespoonful each of cream, orange and vanilla syrups, and pour into a glass nearly filled with cracked ice. Add soda water. Stir, and put a grating of nutmeg on top.
A fountain drink built directly in the glass, which means the assembly order carries all the weight. Three syrups and a charge of soda are the whole recipe.
- "Cream syrup" is not cream"Cream syrup" is not necessarily cream -- in fountain usage this was usually a heavy sweetened syrup, variously bodied with gum arabic, egg or a little dairy, giving richness without the perishability of straight cream. Modern half-and-half or a splash of heavy cream will read as richer than most versions of the original.
- Syrups are 1:1 sugar syrupsFountain orange and vanilla syrups were roughly equal parts sugar and liquid, far sweeter and thicker than a modern juice or extract. Substituting orange juice for orange syrup will give a thin, sour drink; use a proper simple-syrup-based flavoring.
- Three tablespoons totalThat is the entire flavor base, about 1 1/2 fl oz. For a 10 to 12 oz glass it is a light drink by current standards, so taste before you decide it needs more soda.
- Soda water means charged waterA fountain delivered carbonated water under pressure, which did the mixing. Bottled or siphon soda works; pour it down the side of the glass against the ice so you keep the carbonation, then stir once.
- Cracked, not cubedCracked ice chills fast and fills the glass, which is why the syrups need only a stir rather than a shake. Cubes leave the syrup sitting at the bottom in a sweet layer.
- The name is fountain shorthandThe name does not match the method -- despite being called a shake, nothing here is shaken: the syrups are stirred in the glass with soda water, and there is no ice cream.
- Grate the nutmeg freshThe recipe calls for "a grating of nutmeg," so a few passes of a whole nutmeg over the top is the finish intended. Pre-ground nutmeg sinks and tastes dusty.
- YieldOne glass, served immediately. There is no holding this; the carbonation is the point.
Books of this kind belong to the American soda fountain's long boom, when the drugstore counter was the respectable alternative to the saloon. The fountain dispenser had a rack of bottled syrups and a spigot of charged water, and the trade's whole art lay in combining a handful of stock syrups into dozens of named drinks -- which is why an orange shake, a vanilla cream and a dozen cousins share nearly identical instructions with the proportions shuffled. The grating of nutmeg on top was a common fountain flourish, often said to carry over from the older habit of dusting nutmeg over eggnog, syllabub and milk punch, and it did double duty as garnish and aroma at a counter where drinks were handed over in seconds.