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Burgundy Punch
Two ounces Burgundy wine, 1 ounce orange syrup. Fill a 12-ounce glass with crushed ice, draw coarse stream to fill glass. Decorate with slice each of pineapple and orange. Serve with straws.
A soda-fountain build rather than a mixed drink in the bar sense: syrup, wine, ice and carbonated water drawn straight into the glass. It comes together in under a minute if the syrup is ready.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesTwo ounces of wine is a quarter cup, one ounce of syrup two tablespoons. A 12-ounce glass at a fountain would most likely have been the tall footed soda glass; any tall 12-14 oz tumbler works.
- Orange syrupFountain syrup, not squash or cordial concentrate. Fountain syrups were heavy sugar syrups, flavoured with orange juice and zest or with orange oil; strengths varied from book to book. Modern orange soda syrup is close enough; unsweetened orange juice is not, and the drink will fall flat without the sugar.
- "Draw coarse stream"The fountain's draught arm had a coarse and a fine stream. Coarse was the heavy fill; fine was the aerated jet used to raise foam. At home this is simply chilled seltzer or club soda poured to fill the glass.
- BurgundyIn American usage "Burgundy" was commonly applied to any dry, dark red table wine, often domestic rather than French. A young Pinot Noir or an unoaked Gamay suits it.
- Ice firstCrushed ice -- The recipe lists the wine and syrup first, then fills the glass with crushed ice. Crushed ice chills faster than cubes in a drink that is never shaken or stirred.
- The garnishThe recipe calls only for a slice each of pineapple and orange; canned pineapple in syrup would have been the likely fountain source. Cut the slices once so they sit over the rim rather than sinking.
- YieldOne glass. Scale by the drink.
Soda fountains were not always dry. Before national Prohibition, American fountain manuals carried a run of wine-based coolers alongside the phosphates and egg drinks -- claret lemonades, sherry cobblers, port sangarees and punches like this one, which its undated page gives no way to date but which reads as pre-Prohibition -- because the fountain was a general-purpose refreshment counter. "Punch" at the fountain had loosened from its old meaning of a bowl shared among company; here it signals only fruit syrup plus fizz, with or without wine, dressed with fruit and drunk through straws. Recipes of this kind vanished from the trade almost entirely after 1920 and mostly did not return, which is why so many later fountain books read as if the counter had always been temperance ground.