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The Mansfield
Mix two tablespoonfuls of chocolate syrup with one tablespoonful of malted milk. Put a ladleful of chocolate, or vanilla ice cream into a suitable glass, and pour over the syrup.
A one-glass soda-fountain formula, written for someone standing behind a marble counter with a syrup pump and a malt canister within reach. Two details do most of the work: the malted milk is a powder, and the syrup should be thick.
- Malted milk is a powderIn fountain usage "one tablespoonful of malted milk" means the dry malt powder (the Horlick's-type tin), not liquid milk. Modern malted milk powder works directly; the chocolate-flavoured kind will make the sundae sweeter and less malty.
- Dissolve before it hits the ice creamStir the powder into the syrup until no grains remain, and give it a minute if it resists. Dropped onto frozen ice cream it stays gritty and clumps at the bottom of the glass.
- Fountain syrup, not modern squeeze-bottle saucePeriod chocolate syrup was a sugar-and-cocoa syrup, pourable but thick. A dense chocolate sauce is the closer match; thin syrup will run straight to the bottom.
- A ladlefulFountain ladles and dishers of the period varied, commonly somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 ounces, roughly a modern scoop. This is one serving; the recipe specifies only "a suitable glass."
- "A suitable glass"Glass, not a bowl, and chilled if possible. The recipe does not specify the shape; in a footed glass the dark syrup shows against the side.
- Serve at onceThe syrup slackens as the ice cream softens, so this is assembled to order rather than held.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of American drink books published as temperance sentiment hardened into national Prohibition, offering fountain drinks and sundaes as an alternative to the bar. Named sundaes like this one were often house specialities, and names were commonly borrowed from hotels, theatres or well-known performers; the individual attributions are rarely documented. Malted milk itself was a late-nineteenth-century invention sold first as an invalid and infant food, and its move to the soda fountain, where it added body as well as flavour, may explain a spoonful turning up in a chocolate sundae.