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Sarsaparilla Cooler
Pour one tablespoonful of cherry syrup, one tablespoonful of lemon syrup, and two table-spoonfuls of sarsaparilla syrup into a glass one third full of cracked ice. Fill up with soda water, and decorate with a cherry and a piece of pineapple.
A soda-fountain formula, written for someone standing behind a marble counter with a syrup rail and a charged-water tap. It scales to a single tall glass and takes about a minute.
- Glass sizeFountain glasses of the period were generally small by modern standards, so the 2 oz of syrup (four tablespoons) plus a glass one third full of ice leaves only a few ounces for the soda. A 12 oz tumbler will taste thin unless you increase the syrups by half.
- The syrupsFountain syrups were 1:1 or heavier sugar syrups flavored with fruit or extract, far thicker and sweeter than a modern cordial. Commercial sarsaparilla syrup is still sold for soda making; if you substitute a bottled sarsaparilla soft drink you are adding water and carbonation and the proportions collapse.
- Sarsaparilla syrupHistorically flavored with Smilax root, often blended with birch, wintergreen and sassafras. Present-day versions lean on wintergreen and vanilla, and safrole-free sassafras flavoring, so the drink reads closer to root beer than the original would have.
- Soda waterThis means water charged under pressure at the fountain, generally colder and more strongly carbonated than bottled club soda. Use plain seltzer straight from a chilled bottle or a home carbonator, and never tonic, which brings its own bitterness and sugar.
- Cracked, not cubedCracked ice chills fast and dilutes fast, which is what a fountain drink wants. Wrap cubes in a towel and hit them with a rolling pin rather than using a blender, which produces snow.
- Cherry and pineappleThe garnish assumed the maraschino cherries and canned pineapple that fountains kept in jars at hand. A spoonful of the cherry jar syrup can stand in for part of the tablespoon of cherry syrup.
- YieldOne drink. Sweetness is high by current taste; cutting the sarsaparilla to a tablespoon and a half gives a more balanced glass.
Soda fountain drinks like this one belonged to the American temperance movement as much as to confectionery. Sarsaparilla itself came into the drink trade by way of the druggist: Smilax root was a standard nineteenth-century blood purifier and alterative, and syrups made from it were sold as medicine long before they were sold as refreshment, which is why so many early fountains were attached to pharmacies. The layering of two or three syrups over cracked ice, then finishing with fruit, is fountain craft of roughly 1890 to 1920, when the dispenser's skill lay in proportioning from the syrup rail by eye and building the glass in front of the customer.