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One-half glass cracked ice, juice of ½ lemon, 2 dashes lactart, 2 ounces cherry malt phosphate syrup. Shake well, then fill with plain soda and serve with two straws.
A fountain drink of the sort a dispenser could build in under a minute, and it survives the trip to a home kitchen intact once the two proprietary bottles on the counter are accounted for.
- "One-half glass cracked ice"Fountain glasses of the period commonly ran somewhere around 10 to 12 ounces, so this is on the order of half to three-quarters of a cup of ice, cracked rather than cubed so it chills fast in the shaker. The finished drink is a single serving.
- LactartA trade name for a dilute lactic acid solution sold to fountains as a souring agent; it gives a soft, milky tartness rather than the sharp bite of citrus. It is no longer stocked as a beverage acid, though food-grade lactic acid is sold to brewers and cheesemakers. Two dashes amounts to only a small quantity, somewhere in the region of 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon depending on the bottle.
- Cherry malt phosphate syrupThree things at once: cherry flavouring syrup, malt extract for body and a roasted-grain note, and acid phosphate. Nothing on a modern shelf combines them, so the usual approach is cherry syrup plus a spoonful of malt extract plus a few dashes of acid phosphate, which is still made for the cocktail trade.
- "Plain soda"Unflavoured carbonated water straight from the fountain, drawn under pressure. Bottled seltzer or club soda works; fill from a fresh bottle so the drink keeps its lift.
- Shake, then fillThe shaking is done before the soda goes in, not after. Shake the ice, lemon, lactart and syrup together, then top with soda so the carbonation is not beaten out. The recipe does not say whether to strain the ice out or leave it in the glass.
- Acid on acidBetween the half lemon, the lactart and the phosphate in the syrup, the drink is deliberately very sour. If you build the syrup yourself, add the acid phosphate a dash at a time and taste.
The soda fountain of the 1900s and 1910s is often said to have named its inventions after whatever the customer was reading about in the newspaper, and the motor car plausibly supplied a long run of them. Behind the name is standard fountain practice. Acid phosphate and lactart were sold to dispensers by the case as souring agents, valued because they cut the flatness of heavy sugar syrups without the fruit flavour of citrus, and malt extract was added to syrups for the same reason it went into the malted milk shake, for body and a toasted depth. That combination of cherry, malt and phosphate placed the drink somewhere between a soda and a tonic, which suited an era when the fountain often stood inside a drugstore and the line between refreshment and mild medicine was drawn loosely on purpose.