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The Marlborough
Mix in a shaker, one and one half tablespoonfuls each of pineapple and orange syrups. Add a spoonful of ice cream and two or three dashes of acid phosphate. Shake well, pour from shaker to glass two or three times, and add carbonated water.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a home drink: it assumes a bar with bottled fruit syrups, an acid phosphate bottle, a hard-frozen tub of ice cream and a charged water tap. All four are obtainable, but each needs a note.
- Acid phosphate is the hingeThis is a solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a souring agent that adds tartness without a fruit flavour of its own. It is still made for the cocktail and soda trade; without it the drink is merely sweet, and lemon juice is not a substitute because it brings its own taste. A dash is not a fixed measure; two or three amounts to something on the order of an eighth to a quarter teaspoon in total.
- Fountain syrups, not juicePineapple and orange syrup here mean sweetened flavouring syrups, not the juice; fountain syrups of this kind were heavily sugared. Modern soda syrups or a homemade simple syrup infused with juice and zest will read correctly; straight juice will taste thin and separate.
- A spoonful of ice creamThe recipe does not say what size spoon; the quantity is small, and its job is body and a faint cloudiness rather than a float. Plain vanilla is the likeliest reading. Use it very cold and hard so it does not vanish entirely in the shaking.
- Shake dryThe recipe calls for no ice in the shaker. The chill comes from the ice cream and the cold carbonated water.
- Why you pour back and forthTransferring between shaker and glass two or three times is the fountain man's way of aerating and folding the mixture without a whisk. Do it before the soda goes in, then add the water last and stir once at most, or the carbonation is lost.
- Carbonated waterAny well-chilled seltzer or soda water from a siphon or fresh bottle. Warm or flat water flattens the whole drink; the phosphate does nothing to restore fizz.
- Yield and glassMakes one drink. The recipe leaves the quantity of carbonated water open, so the finished volume depends on the glass; fill short of the rim so the head does not run over.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of temperance drink books that appeared as national prohibition came into view: the title plays on the old American phrase for a person who has sworn off liquor, someone "on the water wagon." Its recipes often read as terse instructions to a soda clerk rather than to a cook, though the book also offers drinks to be made at home. Acid phosphate had by then been sold to druggists for decades, first as part of the nerve-tonic trade and then simply as the standard souring agent behind the counter, and its sharp mineral bite is often said to account for why nineteenth-century sodas tasted less cloying than their modern descendants. Names like The Marlborough were largely decorative, borrowed from hotels, streets and titled families to lend a plain mix of two syrups a bit of gloss; there is no documented connection between this glass and any particular Marlborough.