The Iroquois
Mix candied ginger, cut in small pieces, with two tablespoonfuls of vanilla syrup. Pour over vanilla ice cream, and add a little cinnamon.
A soda-fountain sundae of the sort assembled to order at a marble counter, written for someone who already had syrups and ice cream at hand. The only real work is judging quantities the original never gives.
- Vanilla syrupNot extract. Fountain vanilla syrup is a sugar syrup flavoured with vanilla; fountain formularies generally call for a heavy syrup (well more sugar than water), simmered and flavoured with a split bean or a teaspoon of extract per cup. Bottled coffee-bar vanilla syrup is a reasonable substitute, though usually thinner.
- QuantitiesTwo tablespoons of syrup suits one generous scoop, about 4 oz of ice cream. A tablespoon of candied ginger, chopped to pea size or smaller, is enough; more and the sundae becomes a ginger dish with ice cream in it.
- Candied gingerPreserved stem ginger in syrup, sold in jars, was common in the period alongside the drier sugared strips, and either could be meant here. If using dry crystallised ginger, let the pieces sit in the syrup a few minutes to soften before pouring.
- The cinnamon"A little" means a light dusting from a shaker over the top, not a measured spoonful. Ground cinnamon on cold ice cream does not dissolve, so it reads as aroma and speckle rather than flavour throughout.
- Order of assemblyMix the ginger into the syrup first, as written, so the pieces are coated and distribute rather than clumping on one side. Pour over the ice cream immediately before serving; the syrup thins as the ice cream melts.
- YieldOne sundae. Scale straightforwardly for more, and serve in a footed glass or shallow bowl rather than a deep one so the ginger stays visible.
Sundaes like this belong to the American soda fountain, which expanded enormously in the first decades of the twentieth century; the growth is often linked to the closing of saloons and the absorption by drugstore counters of both their custom and their vocabulary of mixed, named drinks, though the fountain trade was already expanding well before that. Books of this kind gave dispensers a stock of proprietary-sounding formulas, each with a name that suggested a hotel, a place or a tribe, so that a counter could offer something a competitor did not; "The Iroquois" here signals nothing about Haudenosaunee foodways and everything about the period's habit of borrowing Native names for commercial products, from hotels to railway cars. Candied ginger was a common fountain ingredient, cheap, shelf-stable and imported in jars, and its heat paired with cinnamon would give a plain vanilla base a distinguishing character without adding cost.