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The Marblehead
Put a small spoonful of chocolate ice cream in a sundae glass, pour over two tablespoonfuls of chocolate syrup and a little shredded cocoanut. Add vanilla ice cream to cover, and decorate with a cherry.
A soda-fountain assembly rather than a cooked recipe, so the only real variables are the syrup and the order of layering.
- Chocolate syrup, fountain stylePeriod fountain syrup was typically a cooked sugar-and-cocoa syrup, thicker than modern squeeze-bottle chocolate. A cocoa syrup boiled with sugar and a little salt gives more body; a thin commercial syrup will tend to run straight to the bottom of the glass.
- "Cocoanut"Shredded cocoanut here means dried, unsweetened coconut. Sweetened flaked coconut will make the sundae cloying against the syrup; if that is all you have, use less.
- The glassA sundae glass is the footed tulip shape, of modest capacity. The layering is the point of the dish, so it wants clear glass and a narrow bowl; a wide dessert bowl loses the effect entirely.
- The hingeBuild it cold and fast. The vanilla goes on as the last step and the glass goes straight to the table — once the coconut absorbs syrup and the ice cream softens, the layers bleed together and it reads as one muddy scoop.
- The cherryA fountain cherry of this era was a maraschino, brined and sugar-cured and commonly dyed. Any stemmed cocktail cherry serves; a fresh cherry in season is better.
- YieldOne glass, one serving.
Soda fountains kept long lists of sundaes named for towns, hotels and resorts, and the names carried no fixed meaning beyond what a given house made — Marblehead, a Massachusetts coastal town and yachting resort, was exactly the sort of place a fountain man would borrow for a chocolate-and-coconut combination. Books of this kind proliferated in the years around national Prohibition, when druggists' fountains and hotel bars alike needed a repertoire that did not involve liquor. The sundae itself is generally traced to American fountains of the 1890s, its origin often attributed to local ordinances against selling ice cream sodas on Sundays, though the story is traditional and claimed by several towns at once.