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The Montclair
Put four tablespoonfuls of vanilla syrup and four tablespoonfuls of orange syrup into a glass one fourth full of cracked ice. Add a spoonful of ice cream. Shake well, and serve with a spoon.
A soda-fountain drink from the era when the dispenser worked from a rack of bottled syrups. Almost everything needed to make it sits in a modern kitchen already, but the proportions assume fountain habits rather than home ones.
- The syrupsFountain vanilla and orange syrup were sugar syrups, typically heavier and sweeter than most bottled flavouring syrups now, flavoured with extract or fruit juice. Four tablespoonfuls of each is 2 fl oz apiece, so 4 fl oz of syrup in total — with the ice and the ice cream on top of that, use a generous glass.
- A spoonful of ice creamThe amount is left open; a small scoop, on the order of a couple of tablespoons, suits the quantity of syrup. The flavour is unspecified, and plain vanilla is the safest guess. A very light, airy ice cream is likely to froth away in the shaking.
- Cracked ice, not cubesCracked ice is roughly cherry-sized shards, made by wrapping cubes in a towel and hitting them with a rolling pin. Whole cubes chill too slowly for a brief shake, and crushed ice melts to slush before you serve.
- Shake in a shaker"Shake well" implies a covered vessel — a cocktail shaker or a jar with a lid — rather than agitating an open glass. Shake only briefly; shake long and the ice cream melts out entirely.
- SweetnessBy modern palates this is very sweet. Cutting each syrup to two tablespoons and topping with a splash of soda water gives something closer to a contemporary orange cream soda without changing the character.
- YieldOne drink. Served undiluted, with a spoon, as directed.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the great age of the American soda fountain, when druggists and confectioners kept dozens of syrups on hand and invented drinks faster than they could name them. "On the water wagon" was current slang for abstaining from alcohol, and books like this one supplied recipes built on syrup, carbonated water, cracked ice and ice cream, presented as respectable substitutes for mixed drinks in the years when temperance sentiment was gathering toward national Prohibition. Naming drinks after places was routine and and suburbs all lent their names to drink lists, and Montclair, New Jersey, was a prosperous commuter town. Whether this particular mixture originated there or merely borrowed the name is not documented.