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The Murray Hill
Mix well together one half pint each of strawberry, vanilla, raspberry, and pineapple syrups. To serve, put four tablespoonfuls of the syrup into a glass with four tablespoonfuls of rich cream. Fill up the glass with soda water, using the syphon. A spoonful of vanilla or strawberry ice cream may be added.
A soda-fountain formula: a batch of mixed syrup kept on hand, then built to order with cream and charged water. Almost everything that can go wrong happens in the glass, not the mixing bowl.
- Stir the syrup and cream firstCombine the four tablespoons of syrup and four of cream and stir them smooth before any soda goes in. Acidic fruit syrup hitting cream under a hard stream of carbonated water will curdle and streak; pre-blending buys you a stable base.
- Half a pint eachThat is one cup of each of the four syrups, for four cups of finished mixture. At a quarter-cup per drink it makes about sixteen servings, so scale down unless you are running a counter.
- The syrups are fountain syrupsSoda syrups of this kind were heavy, sugar-dense things, far thicker than a modern thin pancake or coffee syrup, and fruit versions often carried some pulp. A thin modern syrup will taste watery and slacken the cream; use a soda-fountain grade syrup or build your own on a heavy simple syrup.
- "Rich cream"Heavy cream, about 36% fat. Half-and-half or coffee cream gives a noticeably flat drink.
- The syphonA seltzer siphon delivered water under real pressure, which was the point — the jet did the mixing. Chilled bottled seltzer or club soda works if you pour it down the side of a tilted glass, slowly, or the cream will foam over the rim.
- Glass sizeFigure a 12-ounce soda glass. Half a cup of syrup and cream plus soda needs the headroom, especially once ice cream goes in.
- Serve cold, serve at onceChill the glass and the syrup mixture. Carbonation dies fast against cream and sugar, and the drink is meant to be drunk within a minute or two of building.
Recipes like this one follow professional fountain practice: a mixed syrup batched in advance so the dispenser only has to measure, add cream, and pull the siphon handle. Named house drinks were a fountain convention, and 'Murray Hill' may nod to the Manhattan neighborhood and the hotel of that name, the sort of association a fountain menu could borrow to make a cream soda sound like something ordered in a lobby. The optional ice cream at the end marks the point where a plain cream soda becomes an ice cream soda.