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Strawberry Grape Float
Mix two tablespoonfuls of strawberry syrup, one tablespoonful of orange syrup, and one tablespoonful of vanilla syrup. Fill a glass one fourth full of cracked ice, pour over the syrup and add soda water. Then pour in carefully one tablespoonful of grape juice so that it floats on top, and add a spoonful of whipped cream.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a kitchen one, written for a counter stocked with pumped syrups and a charged-water tap. Everything it needs is available now, but the proportions assume fountain-strength syrup.
- The hinge: floating the grape juiceThe float only works if the grape juice is poured slowly down the back of a spoon held against the inside of the glass, just at the surface of the soda. Poured straight in, it sinks and you have a purple drink rather than a layered one.
- Fountain syrup is not cordialPeriod soda syrups were roughly two parts sugar to one part water, flavoured and quite thick, which is why four tablespoons of syrup can carry a whole glass. Thin modern coffee syrups will taste watery; use a proper heavy fruit syrup, or reduce the quantity if you substitute something sweeter.
- Orange and vanilla syrupBoth were standard fountain stock. Vanilla syrup is easily made from sugar syrup and extract; for orange, a reduced juice-and-sugar syrup stands in better than modern orange soda concentrate.
- Soda waterThis means unflavoured carbonated water, freshly charged and cold. Add it slowly against the ice so the carbonation survives the pour, because you still have to float the grape juice afterwards.
- Grape juiceUnfermented purple grape juice, of the Concord type, is the likely intent, and it is still the right choice: its colour is what makes the float visible. Clear white grape juice defeats the purpose.
- Cracked iceBroken from a block with an ice pick, so smaller and more irregular than cubes. Coarsely crushed ice is the closest equivalent; fine crushed ice melts too fast and dilutes the syrup.
- Whipped creamFountain whipped cream was generally stiff and often unsweetened, on the reasoning that the syrups supply the sugar. A spoonful means a spoonful, dropped on top, not a piped tower.
- YieldOne drink, in a standard soda glass; the book gives no size. Serve with a long spoon and a straw, and do not stir if you want the layer to last.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the temperance side of the American soda fountain, where "on the water wagon" meant off drink altogether; it offered drinks that could be made at home, alcohol-free alternatives meant to compete directly with the saloon. Unfermented grape juice was central to that project, traced to Thomas Bramwell Welch, a Methodist dentist who pasteurised grape juice in the late 1860s to provide a non-alcoholic communion wine, and by the 1910s bottled grape juice was a fountain staple with a faintly virtuous reputation. The "float" itself is pure fountain showmanship: an ordinary three-syrup soda given a name by a tablespoonful of dark juice poured over the back of a spoon, and finished with cream to justify the glass.