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Blackberry Syrup (II)
American Concentrated Blackberry Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 4 quarts; Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain dispenser's formula rather than a domestic one: a concentrated fruit base cut with sugar syrup and sharpened with acid, meant to be pumped an ounce at a time into a glass of soda water. Everything hinges on the strength of the plain syrup, which the book assumes you already keep on hand.
- Plain syrupIn fountain practice this means a heavy simple syrup; period formularies commonly call for something in the region of 7 to 8 lb of granulated sugar per gallon of water. A thinner syrup will give a watery, flat-tasting finished product.
- American concentrated blackberry syrupEvidently a trade article: a concentrated blackberry preparation bought in rather than made at the fountain. A modern stand-in is a strong blackberry juice reduction or a good commercial blackberry concentrate.
- Fruit acidNot a mystery ingredient. Fountain "fruit acid" or "solution of citric acid" was typically citric or tartaric acid dissolved in water, often about 1 ounce of crystals to 4 ounces of water. An ounce of that solution in five quarts is a light touch; taste and add more, since it is there to keep the sweetness from cloying.
- QuantitiesThe 1 ounce of acid is most likely a fluid measure of acid solution, though the book does not say so. The finished batch is 5 quarts plus, about a gallon and a quart -- a working quantity for a shop, and worth scaling to a fifth for home use.
- ServingThe period standard is 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces of syrup per 8-ounce glass, filled with carbonated water and stirred. It also works over ice with still water, or as a base for a cream soda with a spoonful of cold milk.
- KeepingA syrup at this sugar concentration resists spoilage but is not sterile. Bottle it hot into clean bottles, cap, and refrigerate; discard at the first sign of fermentation, film or gassing, all of which fruit syrups do readily in warm weather.
Soda fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are essentially formularies, written for the dispenser rather than the cook, and they assume a stockroom of trade goods — foam solutions, acid phosphate — that a household never saw. Blackberry appears often in them, partly because it kept well and partly because blackberry preparations carried a long domestic reputation as a remedy for summer bowel complaints; blackberry cordial and blackberry brandy appear in nineteenth-century home medicine books as often as in drink books. The pattern here — one part fruit concentrate to four parts sugar syrup, corrected with acid — is one of several proportions found in the formularies, which vary from book to book, and the acid is doing the same job that lemon juice does in a modern shrub or cordial: restoring the tartness that cooking and sugar strip out.