Home › Sundaes › The Van Cortlandt
The Van Cortlandt
Mix in a sherbet glass, two tablespoonfuls of vanilla syrup, and two tablespoonfuls of crushed strawberries. Add a little shaved ice and decorate with a spoonful of whipped cream.
A soda-fountain sundae in the older sense of the word: syrup, fruit and shaved ice, with no ice cream in it at all. It takes about two minutes to build, so have everything cold before you start.
- Sherbet glassA small footed dessert glass. Any small stemmed dessert glass works; the point is that the portion is deliberately modest.
- Vanilla syrupFountain syrup, not the thin coffee-shop kind: roughly two parts sugar dissolved in one part water, cooled, then flavoured with vanilla extract to taste. Commercial vanilla syrups vary in strength and sweetness, so adjust to taste.
- Crushed strawberriesFountains kept a crushed-fruit jar: berries mashed with a little sugar and left half an hour so they gave up their juice. Whole or sliced berries will not carry the flavour through the syrup the same way.
- Shaved iceGenuinely shaved or finely crushed, not cubes. Coarse ice sits in a lump and waters the syrup down as it melts instead of chilling the mixture through.
- Whipped creamHeavy cream whipped to soft peaks, unsweetened or barely sweetened, since the syrup already carries the sugar. Aerosol cream collapses quickly into the ice.
- Order of workMix the syrup and fruit first, then add the ice, then the cream on top. Adding cream before the ice muddies the whole glass.
- YieldOne glass. Four tablespoons of liquid plus ice is a single small serving; scale up by the glass rather than making a batch.
Van Cortlandt is a Bronx name of long standing, attached to the colonial-era Van Cortlandt house and the park around it. The name's own origin is traditionally traced to a dodge around Sunday laws that restricted the sale of soda water, though the story is repeated far more often than it is documented.