The Montrose
Put a layer of sliced peaches and a layer of vanilla ice cream into a sundae glass. Add a spoonful of whipped cream, decorate with a cherry, and pour over all fresh cherry juice or cherry syrup.
A soda-fountain assembly rather than a cooked dish, so the only things that need translating are the glassware and the syrup.
- The sundae glassPeriod sundae glasses were generally small footed tulip or bell shapes, holding rather less than a modern dessert coupe. Use a small glass: in anything wide the two layers are lost.
- Cherry juice or syrupThis means fountain cherry syrup: a heavy sugar syrup flavoured and coloured with cherry, closer to a soda syrup than to fruit juice. Bottled maraschino syrup or the drained liquid from a jar of maraschino cherries is the nearest thing on a supermarket shelf; unsweetened tart cherry juice will taste thin and sour against the ice cream.
- The cherry on topA fountain cherry of this period meant a maraschino, preserved in sweetened syrup. Any candied or brandied cherry serves the same decorative purpose.
- PeachesFresh, ripe, peeled and sliced thin is the intent, this being a summer-counter recipe. Canned peaches in syrup work but drain them well, or the syrup pools and dilutes the cream.
- Whipped creamWhip only to soft peaks, lightly sweetened, so the spoonful drops cleanly and settles; whipped stiff it sits on the glass like a lump.
- Order of workEverything should be prepared and chilled before assembly, then built and served at once, as the layers blur quickly.
- YieldOne glass, one serving.
This comes from a book of non-alcoholic drinks and fountain dishes published as national Prohibition arrived, when the phrase "on the water wagon" was current slang for going dry — hence the title's joke about riding on Uncle Sam's wagon. Soda fountains had been growing for decades as respectable public rooms where women could sit unaccompanied, and with saloons closing they inherited a good deal of the trade; recipe collections like this one put the fountain repertoire within reach of readers at home. Sundaes themselves were an American invention of the 1880s or 1890s, and their name is generally traced to Sunday restrictions on selling flavoured soda water, the syrup being poured over ice cream instead — a traditional explanation rather than a documented one. Named sundaes were the fountain's stock in trade, each a fixed combination of ice cream, fruit, syrup and cream christened after a hotel, a town or a person; "The Montrose" is one of many such house names, its particular reference unclear from the formula alone.