Home › At the Fountain › Bismarck Sundae
Bismarck Sundae
Fill sundae cup two-thirds full vanilla ice cream, fill up with chopped dates and figs and pour over some maple syrup. Top off with whipped cream. Beginners are advised to stick close to the popular and well established flavors - Vanilla, Chocolate, Lemon, Strawberry, Pineapple, Raspberry, Orange and Sarsaparilla.
A soda-fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: assembly only, with no quantities given. The proportions are the whole of it.
- Sundae cup sizeFountain sundae cups of the period were small by modern standards, so two-thirds full is roughly two small scoops of ice cream. Modern dessert bowls run larger; scale the fruit and syrup up rather than drowning the ice cream.
- Dates and figsUse dried figs and pitted dates, chopped small — about 2 tablespoons total per serving. Dried fruit of this kind was often sold pressed and would have been firmer than today's soft-pack fruit; if yours are dry, a brief soak in warm water and a thorough drain keeps them from pulling at the teeth.
- Maple syrupFountain maple syrup was frequently a maple-flavoured cane blend. Real syrup is thinner and will sink; about 1 tablespoon is enough, poured just before serving so it does not freeze into a sheet on the ice cream.
- Whipped creamWhip to soft peaks only — stiff cream sits on top like a cap instead of settling into the fruit.
- The closing sentenceThe advice about sticking to established flavors reads as general guidance to the beginner dispenser rather than an instruction for this particular sundae.
- SarsaparillaOf the eight flavors listed, sarsaparilla is the one that has effectively vanished from fountains. It was a root-based syrup, closer to root beer than to anything fruit; commercial sarsaparilla concentrate is still sold if you want the period range.
- YieldOne serving as written.
Fountain manuals of the early twentieth century named sundaes freely after public figures, cities and whatever was in the newspapers, and Bismarck — Otto von Bismarck, dead in 1898 and still a household name in America — turns up on soda menus, in bakeries and on butchers' boards alike, usually attached to something rich, dark or German-sounding. The name here carries no fixed meaning beyond that. What the entry does show is how a dispenser's book worked. The recipes are short because the man behind the counter already knew how to build a sundae; what he needed was the list of what goes in which cup, and a warning, tacked on at the end, not to get inventive before he had mastered the flavors the book calls popular and well established.