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The Hamilton
Mix one and one half teaspoonfuls of malted milk with three tablespoonfuls of plain syrup, add the juice of one lemon and a spoonful of ice cream. Shake with ice, pour into tall glass and fill up with soda water.
A soda-fountain drink, built the way a counterman would build it: flavourings and ice cream shaken cold, then lengthened with charged water. It comes together in under two minutes and is worth measuring rather than eyeballing.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" of the period was generally heavier than a modern 1:1 syrup, dissolved warm and cooled; published formulas vary. Three tablespoonfuls of a modern 1:1 syrup will read thinner and more sour against a whole lemon.
- Malted milkThis means the plain unflavoured malted milk powder sold from the 1880s onward, not a chocolate malt mix and not malt extract. Whisk or shake it into the syrup first, since the powder clumps on contact with cold liquid.
- "A spoonful of ice cream"Read as a small spoonful of plain vanilla, perhaps a rounded tablespoon; the original gives no measure. It is there for body and foam rather than sweetness.
- No egg, despite the headingNo egg -- The recipe names no egg at all, despite the drink being grouped with egg drinks; why it sits there is unclear. Were an egg added, it would not be cooked at any point.
- Soda waterUse the coldest, most vigorously carbonated water available and pour it down the side of the glass onto the shaken base. Warm or flat water gives a dull drink; the original assumed a pressurised fountain draught.
- ShakingShake with cracked ice, then pour into the glass as directed and top up with soda water. If you prefer the drink not to dilute as it stands, strain off the shaking ice, though the original simply says to pour.
- YieldOne tall glass; the finished volume depends entirely on the glass, since the soda is simply used to fill up.
Books of this kind appeared as the American temperance movement gathered force before national Prohibition, and they treated the soda fountain as a rival to the bar, complete with a bartender's habit of naming drinks after people, places and clubs. Malted milk, a powder of dried malted barley and wheat with milk, is generally traced to the Horlick brothers in Racine, Wisconsin, in the early 1880s, and was first marketed as an invalid and infant food before fountain men took it up for cold drinks. Pairing it with lemon juice looks odd now, when malts are almost always chocolate or vanilla, but the acid keeps the drink from turning cloying.