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Brunswick Cooler
This is a popular Jersey drink. One-half ounce lemon syrup, ½ ounce orange syrup, ½ ounce cherry syrup, ¼ glass shaved ice. Fill glass with coarse stream. Dress with pineapple and cherry fruit. "Buffalo."
Made with II ingredients and sells for II cents.
Chipped ice, a dash of vanilla, nectar syrup, lemon juice, sherbert, dash of grape juice, sprig of mint, slice of pineapple, slice of orange, strawberries and maraschino cherries. Simple Syrup is the basis of all soda water syrups and the formula for making it is given in this book.
Two drinks are run together here: the plain Brunswick Cooler, then a more elaborate version labeled "Buffalo." The syrup measures are the whole recipe, so accuracy in the pour matters more than anything else.
- Glass and volumeA fountain "glass" was not a standard size; soda glasses of the era ran roughly 8 to 12 ounces. Half an ounce of each syrup gives 1½ ounces of sweetening in a glass of that size.
- "Coarse stream"Fountain draft arms had a fine stream for mixing and a coarse stream for filling. The coarse stream is a fast, low-agitation flow of carbonated water. With a siphon or bottled seltzer, pour down the side of the glass in one continuous go rather than in stages, so the carbonation survives.
- Shaved iceA quarter glass of shaved ice, not cubes. Shaved ice chills on contact and dilutes quickly. Crush ice in a towel with a mallet if you have no shaver.
- The syrupsLemon, orange and cherry fountain syrups are simple syrup plus flavoring and acid, made thick; fountain formulas commonly run to something like two parts sugar to one of water. "Nectar syrup" in the Buffalo version was a fountain blend that varied from house to house; there is no single formula and any good fruit syrup stands in.
- "Sherbert"Ambiguous here. At a fountain the word could mean a frozen fruit ice, or a sherbet powder or syrup base carrying tartaric or citric acid with bicarbonate, added for tartness and lift. Either reading fits the list; if you cannot source the powder, a squeeze more lemon juice covers the sourness but not the fizz.
- "II ingredients" and "II cents"Print artifact for 11 ingredients and 11 cents. Count the Buffalo list and you get eleven, which confirms the reading.
- Order of buildingSyrups first, then ice, then water. Dropping syrup onto ice leaves a sweet slug at the bottom of the glass, and no amount of stirring after the carbonation is in will fix it without flattening the drink.
- DressingFruit goes on last and sits on top: pineapple and cherry for the cooler, and for the Buffalo a mint sprig slapped once between the palms to release oil, plus pineapple, orange, strawberries and maraschinos. Each recipe makes one drink.
Soda-fountain manuals were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than for the home, which is why the entries read as costed formulas with a selling price attached. "Cooler" was a standing fountain category — a tall glass, shaved ice, two or three fruit syrups and a fast fill of carbonated water — and the local names attached to them, here a "Jersey drink," tell you how regional the fountain trade was. The second, more lavish specification under the name "Buffalo" shows the other half of the business: an eleven-ingredient drink dressed with mint, pineapple, orange, strawberries and cherries was closer to a mocktail than a soda. The closing reminder that simple syrup underlies every fountain syrup is the practical heart of the whole genre; the quality of that one boiled sugar solution decided the quality of everything on the menu.