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Asparagus Bouillon
American Asparagus Bouillon, ½ ounce. Hot water to fill cup. Sprinkle with celery salt.
This is a fountain formula rather than a kitchen one: a measured dose of a proprietary liquid concentrate, topped with hot water and finished at the counter. Reproducing it means finding a stand-in for a product that no longer exists.
- What "American Asparagus Bouillon" wasThe capitalised name points to a proprietary preparation bought in rather than asparagus you cook yourself, though the recipe says nothing more about it. Nothing on a modern shelf matches it; a light vegetable broth base with a little asparagus puree strained in is the nearest approximation.
- The measurementHalf a fluid ounce is one tablespoon. Against a cup of roughly six ounces that works out at about 1 part concentrate to 11 parts water.
- Cup sizeBouillon cups of the period were generally smaller than a modern mug, so assume something well under 8 ounces. Scale up the concentrate if you use a larger cup or it will taste of hot water.
- Celery saltThis is the whole seasoning, so quality shows. Fresh celery salt still smells of celery seed; old jars are simply salt. "Sprinkle" is left to the server's judgement; a light dusting over the surface, added last.
- Yield and servingOne cup, served hot. It is a light savoury drink, not a soup course.
Soda fountains needed winter trade, and hot savoury drinks were part of the answer: beef bouillon, clam broth, hot malted milk and vegetable bouillons appear on fountain lists from the 1900s through the 1920s alongside the syrups. Such extracts sit comfortably with the era's view of the drugstore as a place of mild medication, where a cup of something salty and warm counted as a restorative and could be poured with the same measuring glass and hot-water tap already behind the counter. Asparagus carried a long reputation as a diuretic and "cleansing" vegetable, which may be part of why an extract of it was worth bottling, though the connection is a guess rather than an established one. The recipe's brevity is telling: the labour had been done before the jar reached the counter, and the clerk's job was to dose, dilute and garnish.