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A Sundae Peach
Over a ladle of peach ice cream pour a sauce made of the following: One pound of mixed nuts chopped fine, mixed with 1 pint of rich maple syrup. "Quality rather than variety will make the reputation of this department of your business."
A fountain formula rather than a home one: the sauce is made in bulk and ladled to order. Scaled down, it is a two-ingredient nut sauce that keeps well.
- A fountain ladleThe ladle here is a single portion of ice cream, not a bowlful; fountain portions of the period were small by modern standards.
- YieldA pound of nuts to a pint of syrup makes roughly a quart of sauce, enough to dress a couple of dozen sundaes at a generous tablespoon and a half each. To scale down, keep the ratio: 4 oz nuts to 1/2 cup syrup for about four servings.
- "Rich maple syrup"This means pure maple rather than an imitation; a darker grade (Grade A dark or very dark) gives the more pronounced flavour, while pancake syrup made from corn syrup and flavouring will taste thin against the cream.
- "Mixed nuts"Probably walnuts, pecans, almonds and filberts (hazelnuts), the nuts most commonly to hand, though the book does not specify. Buy them raw and unsalted if you can, since salted cocktail mixes will throw the balance off.
- ToastingThe original does not call for it, but nuts chopped and left raw in syrup go soft within a day. Toasting them first at 350F for 8 to 10 minutes keeps some crispness and deepens the flavour considerably.
- The consistency to aim forThis is a suspension, not a smooth sauce; the nuts settle and the syrup rises. Stir each time before ladling, and do not thin it, since maple syrup already runs freely over cold ice cream.
- Keeping itSugar concentration keeps the syrup itself stable, but nut oils turn. Refrigerate in a jar and use within two weeks; bring it back to room temperature before serving so it pours rather than sinks in a lump.
- The peach ice creamA custard-based peach ice cream stands up to the sweetness better than a plain fruit ice. If using commercial ice cream, one with visible fruit rather than peach flavouring will hold its own against the maple.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the druggist who had turned half his shop over to a marble counter and needed formulas he could execute in seconds during a rush. Hence the structure here: a sauce mixed by the pound and pint in advance, then portioned by the ladle. The closing line about quality rather than variety is the book talking shop to its actual reader, an operator tempted to advertise fifty sundaes when a dozen good ones would serve him better. The sundae itself is generally traced to the 1880s or 1890s in the American Midwest, and its name is usually explained by local ordinances that discouraged the selling of sodas on Sunday, though the accounts conflict and no single origin is documented. Maple-nut was one of the standard flavour pairings of the fountain era, appearing as a syrup, an ice cream and a topping, and it survives most visibly today in maple walnut ice cream.