The Shoreham
Cover vanilla ice cream with a mixture of finely cut orange, pineapple, and cherry. Add whipped cream and chopped English walnuts.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: no quantities, because it was assembled to order behind a counter. A few conventions of the trade are worth knowing before you build it.
- ProportionsThe recipe gives no quantities. Two small scoops of ice cream with a few spoonfuls of the fruit mixture, a spoonful of whipped cream and a scant tablespoon of nuts is a reasonable reading of a single serving. The fruit should sit on top as a cover, not be stirred in.
- The fruit is drained, not syrupyOrange, pineapple and cherry at a fountain would most likely have come from cut fruit held in light syrup. Cut fresh fruit fine and drain it well; loose juice thins the ice cream and pools in the bottom of the glass.
- "Cherry" means maraschino"Cherry" here is most likely the maraschino cherry standard at fountains of the period, used mainly for colour and a spot of sweetness. One or two chopped per serving is plenty against the orange and pineapple.
- Fresh pineapple and dairyRaw pineapple contains bromelain, which will make cream taste bitter and turn a soft custard loose if it sits. Assemble and serve immediately, or use canned pineapple, in which the enzyme has been heat-killed.
- English walnutsSimply the common walnut, as distinct from the American black walnut, which is far stronger. Toasting them briefly is not called for here, but improves them considerably.
- Whipped creamSweetened cream whipped without a stabiliser slumps within minutes. Whip to soft peaks just before serving; over-whipping turns it grainy.
- YieldAs written, one sundae. It scales by the glass rather than by the batch, though the fruit mixture can be cut an hour ahead and kept cold.
This comes from a 1919 collection of non-alcoholic drinks and fountain dishes gathered from American hotels as national Prohibition approached, and the title of the book is the joke: the country was climbing aboard the water wagon whether it liked it or not. Hotels with famous bars faced a real commercial problem, and the answer was to put the bar's skills to work on sodas, punches and elaborate sundaes, which is why a dish this simple carries a hotel's name at all. The Shoreham was a leading Washington hotel of the period, standing at 15th and H NW, near the White House. The sundae itself is generally traced to American soda fountains of the 1890s, and the standard explanations for the name involve Sunday sales restrictions on soda water; the story is repeated in several towns and is traditional rather than settled. What is clear from formulas like this one is how the fountain worked: standing crocks of cut fruit, syrups, whipped cream and chopped nuts, combined to order in named permutations, a house style rather than a recipe.