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Pineapple and Raspberry
To a glass two thirds full of fine cracked ice add one tablespoonful of pineapple syrup, one half teaspoonful of lemon juice, and one teaspoonful of raspberry vinegar. Sweeten with one teaspoonful of powdered sugar. Stir well and add soda water to fill the glass. Garnish with a spoonful of crushed raspberries.
A soda-fountain drink built in the glass, in the style of the pre-Prohibition temperance books. Nothing here is difficult; the only unfamiliar element is the raspberry vinegar, which is what makes the drink interesting rather than merely sweet.
- Raspberry vinegarNot a salad vinegar but a sweetened fruit shrub — raspberries steeped in vinegar, strained, and boiled with sugar into a syrup. Commercial raspberry drinking vinegars and shrubs work; a modern raspberry wine vinegar does not, as it has no sugar and far more acid.
- Pineapple syrupA fountain syrup: sweetened pineapple juice, thicker and much sweeter than juice alone. Canned pineapple juice cooked with sugar gives roughly the right body; unsweetened juice alone will be thin and the drink will taste flat.
- The glassPeriod soda-fountain glasses ran somewhere in the range of 8 to 12 ounces. Two thirds full of cracked ice still leaves a fair volume for syrup and soda, since liquid fills the gaps between the ice.
- Cracked, not cubed"Fine cracked ice" chills and slightly dilutes as you stir. Whole cubes leave the syrups sitting at the bottom in a layer; if you have only cubes, crush them in a towel.
- Powdered sugarMeant here as fine caster or superfine sugar, which dissolves in cold liquid. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will cloud the drink — use superfine sugar or a splash of simple syrup instead.
- Soda waterPlain carbonated water, unflavoured and unsweetened. Pour it down the side of the glass against the ice to keep the carbonation; the drink is already sweet, so club soda's slight mineral salt is fine but tonic water is not.
- Order of workStir the syrups, juice and sugar with the ice until the sugar has gone before adding any soda. Once the soda is in, stirring only drives the gas off.
- YieldOne glass. Everything scales directly, but build each drink individually — a pitcher of it will be dead within minutes.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to a small genre of American drink books published in the years just before national Prohibition, when temperance societies and soda fountains together created real demand for elaborate drinks with no alcohol in them; the title puns on the phrase "on the water wagon," meaning to have sworn off liquor. Recipes like this one borrow the method of the soda fountain — the pharmacy soda fountain was the standard American source of cold drinks well into the twentieth century. The raspberry vinegar is the older element: fruit shrubs sharpened with vinegar were a common summer cooler in Britain and America long before carbonation was available, and their sour edge is why a drink this sweet does not cloy.