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Atlantic City Punch
One ounce orange syrup, 1 ounce pineapple syrup, 5 dashes sherry wine, 2 dashes aromatic bitters, 4 ounces plain cream. Shake, add seltzer and strain. Egg may be added if desired.
A soda fountain drink, built in a shaker and finished with carbonated water. The measures are fluid ounces and the whole thing makes one tall glass.
- The hinge: shake cold, carbonate lastThe hinge: shake cold, seltzer at the end -- Pineapple syrup is acidic and cream can curdle if it sits in it or warms up. Shake the syrups, wine, bitters and cream hard with ice. The recipe as written adds the seltzer and then strains; straining first and topping with seltzer in the glass will keep more of the carbonation.
- Fountain syrupsOrange and pineapple syrup here mean dispenser syrups, roughly a heavy simple syrup carrying the fruit flavor, sweeter and thicker than modern juice. Bottled soda-fountain or Italian-style syrups are the closest match; fruit juice alone will make the drink thin and sharp.
- "Plain cream"Unsweetened, unflavored cream. Fountain cream was generally a light coffee cream rather than a heavy one, so today's light cream or half-and-half is the nearest match. Four ounces is a half cup, which is a substantial amount; heavy cream will make the glass cloying.
- DashesA dash is conventionally reckoned at about 1/8 teaspoon, though fountain dash bottles varied. Five dashes of sherry is then something over half a teaspoon and two dashes of bitters about a quarter teaspoon, so the alcohol content is negligible; the wine is a seasoning, not a spirit.
- Aromatic bittersAngostura or any comparable aromatic bitters. Orange bitters will read differently against the orange syrup and flatten it out.
- SeltzerEnough to fill a 10 to 12 ounce glass, so about 4 to 5 ounces over the strained mixture. Draw it in gently down the side to keep the head.
- The optional eggA whole raw egg shaken in was a common fountain addition and gives body and foam. If you want it, use pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg; nothing in this drink is ever heated.
- YieldOne glass. Serve immediately.
Soda fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were trade books written for dispensers, and they borrowed freely from the bar: a "punch" at the fountain generally meant a fruit-syrup drink with a few dashes of wine or bitters standing in for a liquor base. Small quantities of sherry, port and aromatic bitters were sold at fountains as flavoring and, in the language of the period, as tonics, which is how a drugstore counter could serve something that looked like a cocktail without being one. Named drinks were also a form of advertising, and Atlantic City was the sort of resort name a dispenser might attach to a rich cream-and-fruit combination, though nothing connects this particular drink to the city. The optional egg places it among the egg phosphates and egg lemonades that fill these books, when a whole raw egg was considered ordinary nourishment rather than a risk.