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Sarsaparilla Syrup
Put three tablespoonfuls of sarsaparilla extract into a gallon jug and fill up with plain syrup. Color with caramel.
A soda fountain formula, not a kitchen recipe: this is the flavoring base that gets pumped into a glass and topped with carbonated water. Everything hinges on what "plain syrup" meant behind the counter.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" of the period was heavier than the 1:1 syrup most bartenders make now; period formulas dissolve several pounds of cane sugar in each half gallon of water. A thinner syrup will taste weak and watery once diluted with soda.
- Scale it downA gallon jug of finished syrup is fountain volume. At three tablespoons of extract per gallon, a quart needs about two and a quarter teaspoons; a pint needs a bit over one teaspoon. Measure the extract, not the syrup, to keep the ratio.
- Sarsaparilla extractSold as a compound flavoring, not an infusion of the root. Historic versions leaned on sassafras and wintergreen alongside actual smilax root; extracts sold today are formulated without safrole, which the FDA barred from food in 1960. Do not substitute an infusion of sassafras root bark for the bottled extract.
- Caramel colorCaramel here is sugar cooked dark and dissolved in a little hot water — burnt-sugar coloring, essentially flavorless in the quantity used. Add it a few drops at a time; the target is a deep root-beer brown, and it is easy to overshoot into black.
- Serving proportionStandard fountain practice was about 1 to 1.5 fl oz of syrup per glass, filled with 6 to 8 oz of charged water and stirred once. A gallon of this syrup makes roughly 90 to 120 drinks.
- Keeping itThere is no acid and no preservative in the formula, so mold on the surface is the usual failure. Bottle it clean, cap it, and refrigerate; use within a month rather than leaving a jug on a back counter as a soda fountain would have done.
Sarsaparilla began as a medicine rather than a treat: extracts of Smilax root were sold through the nineteenth century as "blood purifiers" and spring tonics, and the flavor arrived at the soda fountain by way of the druggist's dispensary, which is where American soda water was poured in the first place. By the time books like this one appeared, the drugstore fountain had become a commercial rival to the saloon, and titles invoking Uncle Sam's water wagon are often read as pitching their formulas at temperance-minded trade and, later, at Prohibition-era proprietors who needed something to sell. The recipe's brevity may itself be telling — it suggests a fountain man was not being taught to cook, only given a ratio, because the extract and the plain syrup were both, presumably, already sitting on his shelf in bulk.