The Eureka
Put three tablespoonfuls of coffee syrup into a shaker with one tablespoonful of rich cream. Add cracked ice and shake briskly. Add enough carbonated water to fill a glass. Pour from shaker to glass several times to thoroughly blend, and serve with whipped cream and a spoonful of ice cream.
A soda-fountain drink built in a shaker rather than pulled at a bar, and easily rebuilt at home once the fountain vocabulary is translated.
- Coffee syrupNot a flavoring extract but a sweet fountain syrup: strong coffee cooked down with a heavy dose of sugar until it pours thickly. Bottled coffee syrup (the New England kind sold for coffee milk) works directly; three tablespoons is a fairly assertive dose.
- Rich creamFountain "rich cream" most likely means heavy or whipping cream; modern heavy cream runs around 36% fat. Half-and-half will thin the drink noticeably and cut the body that makes this worth making.
- Carbonated waterPlain unflavored seltzer or siphon water. Club soda adds mineral salts that read as slightly salty against the coffee; unflavored seltzer is closer to the original.
- The hinge: shake first, gas lastOnly the syrup, cream and ice go in the shaker. The soda water is added afterward, and the back-and-forth pouring should be done in two or three quick passes at most, low and close to the glass. Prolonged pouring is what flattens the drink.
- Cracked iceCracked, not cubed and not crushed: coarse chips chill fast without watering the mixture. A cube or two smashed in a towel is right; a blender full of snow is not.
- Glass sizeFountain glasses of the period ran roughly 8 to 12 ounces, and the recipe makes one. Leave room at the top for the whipped cream and the scoop of ice cream, which are part of the drink and not a garnish.
- Filed under ChocolateNo chocolate -- The recipe as printed contains no chocolate at all. A tablespoon of chocolate syrup alongside the coffee syrup gives a mocha version, but the original is a coffee drink.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of American drink books published as national Prohibition approached, when the soda fountain was being promoted in earnest as the respectable replacement for the saloon — hence the title's joke about riding the water wagon. Fountain work of this period ran on bottled and house-made syrups, a siphon of carbonated water, and cream and ice cream kept close at hand, so a "recipe" is really an assembly order.