The Chatham
Put a ladleful of vanilla ice cream in a glass. Cover with chopped pecans, and pour over cocoa syrup. Add whipped cream.
A four-part fountain sundae, given in the shorthand a soda clerk would have understood. The only real decisions are the syrup and the temper of the ice cream.
- A ladlefulNo measure is given; a scoop of roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup is a fair reading. Two scoops fills a modern tulip sundae glass better.
- Cocoa syrup is not chocolate sauceFountain cocoa syrup was made from cocoa powder, sugar and water, boiled briefly and used cold or barely warm. It is thinner and more bitter than bottled chocolate syrup, and it does not set into fudge on contact with the ice cream. If you substitute a modern syrup, use less of it.
- Chill the glassFive minutes in the freezer keeps the ice cream from slumping while you build the layers.
- Toast the pecansRaw pecans go soft and slightly waxy under cold syrup. Ten minutes at 350F, cooled completely, then chopped, gives the contrast the recipe is after.
- Order of assembly mattersNuts before syrup, as written: the syrup traps them against the ice cream instead of letting them slide off the top. Whipped cream goes on last and should be unsweetened or barely sweetened, since the syrup carries the sugar.
- YieldOne sundae.
This comes from a Prohibition-minded drink and fountain book, published in the years when American hotels and restaurants were rebuilding their beverage lists around the soda fountain rather than the bar; the title's "water wagon" is the period idiom for going dry. Sundaes named after hotels were a standard piece of fountain marketing, and names like Plaza, Waldorf and Astor were borrowed freely for menu items far beyond the houses that inspired them, though the recipe itself names no hotel. Cocoa syrup rather than melted chocolate was the fountain standard of the era because it kept for days in a jar and poured cold.