The Elmwood
Put a ladleful of vanilla ice cream into a sundae glass, and pour over four tablespoonfuls of maple syrup. Add chopped walnuts and whipped cream.
A fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe, written for someone working behind a marble counter with a scoop, a syrup pump and a glass already chilled. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- A ladlefulOne generous scoop of ice cream, a single serving in a footed sundae glass.
- Four tablespoonfuls is a lotA quarter cup of syrup over a single scoop, in keeping with the sweetness of period fountain work. Two tablespoons may read as more balanced now, and the walnuts will still register.
- Use real mapleFountain "maple syrup" of the period was often a compound of cane syrup with a little maple or maple flavouring. A dark, robust-grade syrup gives the caramel depth the sundae was reaching for; pancake syrup gives sugar and nothing else.
- Warm the syrup or don'tCold syrup sits on the ice cream in a ribbon; hot syrup can set into a thin chewy sheet where it meets the frozen surface. Either is correct, but decide before you pour.
- Toast the walnutsChopped raw walnuts taste faintly bitter and tannic against maple. Five to seven minutes in a 350F oven, then cooled completely, is the difference between a garnish and a component.
- Whipped creamCream whipped to soft peaks with no sugar at all, given how sweet the base is. Aerosol cream collapses within a minute or two into the syrup, which is not fatal but is worth knowing.
- Order of assemblyAs written, the nuts go under the cream, which keeps them from sliding off. If you want them visible, hold back a pinch to scatter on top.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon (1919) belongs to the small flood of books published as national Prohibition came into view, a collection of drinks to be made at home. Sections of sundaes and fountain drinks named after hotels, as this one is, reflect the way the soda fountain moved from the back of the pharmacy to the front of respectable social life in the 1910s. Maple and walnut was already a settled American pairing by then, and it worked especially well at a fountain because neither element needs ice. The whole formula is essentially an inventory instruction: three shelf-stable things a fountain already had, plus the ice cream and cream it could not do without.