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Banana Syrup
American Concentrated Banana Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: four gallons of finished dispensing syrup built from a purchased concentrate. Everything hinges on knowing what the two unnamed base ingredients were.
- Plain syrupA heavy simple syrup of dissolved granulated sugar, brought just to the boil and strained. Period fountain manuals differ on strength, but the syrup called for here is sugar-heavy rather than a light one; a thin syrup will give a weaker, more watery drink once it meets carbonated water.
- Concentrated banana syrupA commercial flavoring concentrate, not a fruit puree. The nearest modern equivalent is a banana extract or fountain flavor emulsion, and the ratio of 1 part concentrate to 3 parts plain syrup will be far too strong for most of them. Start at a fraction of that and taste against soda water, not neat.
- Fruit acidGenuinely ambiguous. In fountain manuals the term covers both dry citric or tartaric acid and a prepared solution of one of them, and the strength of such solutions varies from book to book. One ounce of dry citric acid in a gallon is bracing but plausible; one ounce of a dilute solution would be nearly nothing. Add it in stages and stop when the sweetness is cut.
- YieldFour quarts of concentrate plus base makes one gallon of dispensing syrup. At the usual draw of 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces per 8-ounce glass, that is roughly 85 to 128 drinks.
- ServingFountain syrup is not meant to be drunk as made. Measure the syrup into the glass first, then fill with cold carbonated water under pressure so the stream mixes it; stirring afterward flattens the drink.
- KeepingPeriod fountains turned syrup over in days and often relied on benzoate of soda as a preservative. A batch made at home has no preservative beyond sugar. Refrigerate it, make a fraction of the quantity, and discard it at the first sign of fermentation or cloudiness.
Banana syrup appears in fountain books because bananas arrived in American cities faster than most people could cook with them. Regular steamship shipments from the Caribbean in the last quarter of the nineteenth century turned the fruit from an exotic curiosity into a cheap staple, and the flavor became fashionable well before home cooks had settled on much to do with it besides eating it raw. The soda fountain solved that problem with chemistry rather than fruit: the banana note in a syrup like this came from a manufactured concentrate, commonly built on isoamyl acetate, the ester that gives ripe bananas much of their smell and that is still what most people mean when they say something tastes of artificial banana. That a dispenser could buy the flavor by the quart, cut it with plain syrup and acid, and have a gallon of dispensing syrup ready before opening tells you how the trade worked around 1900 -- the fountain man was assembling proprietary preparations, not making fruit syrups from fruit.