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The Rochester
Add two tablespoonfuls of coffee syrup to a glassful of milk. Stir thoroughly and add a ladleful of coffee ice cream and a spoonful of chopped English walnuts.
A soda-fountain drink, written for someone standing at a marble counter with syrup pumps and a covered ice cream cabinet within reach. Nothing here is difficult; the measures are the only obstacle.
- GlassfulA fountain glass of the period held roughly 8 to 10 ounces, and it was filled with ice cream and syrup as well as milk. Start with about 6 oz of cold milk so there is room for the scoop.
- LadlefulAt the fountain this meant an ice cream scoop rather than a soup ladle: roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup, one generous scoop. Two tablespoons of syrup to that much milk gives a mildly sweet drink by modern taste.
- Coffee syrupNot brewed coffee. Fountain coffee syrup was a sweetened concentrate, still sold in New England as a bottled product for coffee milk. A strong cold-brew concentrate stirred with an equal volume of simple syrup stands in for it.
- Stir before the ice cream goes inThe instruction to stir thoroughly comes first for a reason. Syrup sinks and stays at the bottom of cold milk; get it dispersed while the glass is still thin, then add the scoop.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, as distinguished from the black walnut then abundant in American yards. Toast and chop them; untoasted walnut sits limply on the surface.
- Yield and servingOne drink. Serve at once with a long spoon and a straw — it is closer to a thin milkshake than a float, and the scoop will slump within a few minutes.
Soda-fountain manuals proliferated in the United States between the 1890s and the 1920s. Named drinks like this were the fountain's stock in trade — a house name, a syrup, a scoop, a garnish — and city names were commonly pressed into service, though what a "Rochester" was meant to evoke is not recorded here. Coffee syrup itself is one of the few fountain concentrates to survive in retail form; it remains a Rhode Island staple, poured into milk much as it is here.