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Angostura Phosphate
Most popular drink in New York is made by adding 1 teaspoonful of angostura bitters to a regular lemon phosphate, in which a little more than the regular quantity of lemon syrup is used.
A fountain drink written for someone who already knows what a lemon phosphate is. Reconstructing it means filling in the base recipe the book assumes.
- The base drinkA standard lemon phosphate of the period was roughly 1 oz lemon syrup and acid phosphate to taste -- period sources range from a few dashes to a teaspoonful -- in a fountain glass of about 8 oz, filled with carbonated water. This recipe calls for "a little more than the regular quantity" of syrup, so use 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 oz.
- Acid phosphate is not a phosphate mineralIt is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold specifically for soda fountains and still made today. It gives a dry, mineral tartness quite unlike lemon juice, and it is what makes the drink a phosphate rather than a lemonade. There is no substitute that behaves the same way; citric acid is sourer and flatter.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was a heavy simple syrup, commonly flavored with lemon oil or peel, though some period formulas used juice as well. A 2:1 sugar-to-water syrup infused with the zest of two or three lemons is closer to the original than anything bottled as lemonade concentrate.
- A teaspoon of bitters is a real doseThat is roughly five to eight dashes, several times what a cocktail would take. The result is deliberately medicinal and aromatic; the formula is secret, but tasters commonly report clove notes and a gentian-like bitterness. Start with half and work up if the flavor is new to you.
- Alcohol contentAngostura bitters run around 45 percent alcohol by volume, so a teaspoon puts a little over 2 mL of alcohol in the glass. Trivial for most drinkers, but worth knowing if the drink is being served as a temperance beverage.
- Order of assemblySyrup, acid phosphate and bitters go in first and get a brief stir, then the carbonated water is drawn in. Adding soda last preserves the carbonation; stirring after the glass is full drives it off.
- YieldOne 8 oz glass. Serve immediately with a straw, cold but without ice if you want the full fizz.
Angostura bitters are generally traced to Dr. Johann Siegert, a German-born surgeon working in the Venezuelan town of Angostura (now Ciudad Bolivar), who compounded them in the 1820s as a stomachic for troops; the recipe has always been proprietary. Acid phosphate arrived from a different direction entirely, out of nineteenth-century interest in phosphates as nerve tonics, and by the 1890s American drugstore fountains stocked it by the gallon. This drink sits exactly where those two currents met: the soda fountain was a pharmacy counter, and a bitter, phosphated, tartly sweet glass could be sold with a straight face as both refreshment and digestive aid. The book's claim that it was the most popular drink in New York is the sort of trade-press boast that fountain manuals traded in, but the combination was widespread enough that the phrase "Angostura phosphate" needed no further explanation to a dispenser of the period.