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Ancient Bitters
One-half glass shaved ice, 4 dashes angostura bitters, 2 dashes elixir calisaya, 4 dashes curacoa cordial, 2 dashes compound tincture gentian, 1 ounce cherry malt phosphate syrup. Shake well and add enough soda to fill 8-ounce glass. Serve in mineral water glass. Soda water is a veritable luxury and, when proper materials are used and the drink is scientifically dispensed, there is nothing half so delicious. At all times use "American Whole" and "Crushed Fruits," " Concentrated Fruit Syrups," "Fruit Phosphates," "Fruit Floss," etc., as they are the very best that can be obtained.
A soda-fountain drink built like a bar cocktail: aromatic tinctures, a flavored syrup, and carbonated water over ice. Nearly everything in it is still obtainable, though two of the bottles now live in different aisles than they did.
- A dashDash bottles were not standardised, but a dash is conventionally reckoned at about 1/8 teaspoon. On that reckoning the twelve dashes here come to roughly a teaspoon and a half of tinctures against an ounce of syrup.
- Elixir calisayaA sweetened alcoholic extract of Cinchona calisaya bark — bitter, faintly quinine. It was a pharmacy staple and is long gone from general trade; a bitter cinchona-based aperitivo or a quinine-forward amaro stands in for two dashes.
- Compound tincture of gentianGentian root with bitter orange peel and cardamom in alcohol, once sold as a stomach bitter. Still made as a herbal tincture, and a gentian-heavy aromatic bitters is the nearest bar equivalent.
- Curacoa cordialAt a soda fountain this may have meant a non-alcoholic orange fountain syrup rather than the liqueur; both were in use. Either will serve, and at four dashes the difference is slight.
- Cherry malt phosphate syrupCherry syrup with malt extract and acid phosphate, the last of which supplies the sour tang that plain cherry syrup lacks. Acid phosphate is sold again for fountain drinks; failing that, cherry syrup with a small amount of malt extract and a squeeze of lemon approximates it, though the mineral edge is the point of the original.
- Shaved ice, then shakeShake the ice, bitters and syrup together first and pour into the serving glass, then charge with soda. Shaking after the soda goes in simply loses the carbonation.
- YieldOne 8-ounce glass. Alcohol from the tinctures amounts to a fraction of a teaspoon overall.
- The advertisingThe closing sentence about "American Whole" fruits and "Fruit Floss" is trade copy for branded products, not a step. Ignore it.
The soda fountain of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sat inside a drugstore, and its drinks borrowed freely from both the pharmacy shelf and the saloon. Calisaya elixir and compound tincture of gentian were dispensed as digestive and febrifuge preparations — cinchona bark being the source of quinine — while angostura and curaçao came straight from the bartender's rail. A drink called Ancient Bitters is trading on that double heritage: it reads as a cocktail, tastes medicinal, and contains almost no alcohol. The phosphate itself came from acid phosphate solution, a diluted phosphoric acid preparation taken up by fountains in the 1870s as a cheaper, sharper alternative to citrus, and it is what distinguishes these drinks from a simple flavored soda.