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American Lemonade
One ounce orange syrup, 1 ounce lemon syrup, 1 teaspoonful powdered sugar, 1 dash acid solution phosphate, ⅓ glass shaved ice. Fill with coarse stream. Add slice of orange and run two straws through it.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: it assumes a carbonated water draft, a rack of bottled syrups and a 12-ounce fountain glass. All of it translates, once you know what the counter equipment was doing.
- The glassFountain "glass" means a soda glass; sizes varied, commonly somewhere between 8 and 12 ounces. A third of a 12-ounce glass of shaved ice is about half a cup, loosely packed, which with the two ounces of syrup leaves roughly 6 ounces for the carbonated water.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesThe two ounces of syrup are measured, not weighed — 2 tablespoons each of orange and lemon syrup. Dispensers used a pump or a graduated ladle for exactly this.
- Acid solution phosphateThis is acid phosphate, a dilute phosphoric acid solution with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, used at fountains to give tartness without the fruit flavour of citric acid. It is still made for the cocktail and soda trade. A "dash" is a few drops from a dasher-top bottle, well under a quarter teaspoon.
- The syrupsFountain lemon and orange syrups were sugar syrups flavoured with fruit juice and oil of the peel, generally heavier in sugar than a modern bottled cordial. If you substitute a commercial cordial, taste before committing the full dash of acid phosphate or the drink may turn sour.
- Powdered sugarIn this period powdered sugar generally means finely ground plain sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Superfine sugar is the closer match and dissolves in cold soda water without clouding.
- Coarse streamFountain taps offered a fine stream for mixing and a coarse one for filling. The coarse stream is a fast, full flow that agitates the glass and blends the syrups — pour the soda water briskly down the centre rather than trickling it in.
- Order of workSyrups, sugar and phosphate go in first and are drawn together, then the ice, then the water. Adding the acid phosphate to a glass already full of ice leaves it sitting on top as a sour first sip.
- YieldOne drink. Doubling in a pitcher does not work well — the carbonation goes flat before the second glass is poured.
The soda fountain of the 1890s and 1900s sold "lemonades" that contained no squeezed lemons at all: they were built from house syrups over carbonated water, and in this formula the American lemonade takes an addition of orange. Acid phosphate was the fountain's workhorse souring agent, promoted through the pharmacy trade — fountains were often attached to drugstores, though the dispenser might be a pharmacist or, as frequently, a clerk working from formularies much like this book. The garnish and the two straws are part of the sale. Recipes of this kind survive in numbers because dispensers' manuals were printed constantly through the period, each promising a longer list of drinks than the last.