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Calisaya Syrup
American Calisaya Extract, 6 ounces; American Extract of Orange, 10 ounces; Simple Syrup, 1 gallon. Mix thoroughly.
Do not have your syrup too thick, as it does not mix well.
This is a druggist's bulk formula from the era when the soda fountain stood at the front of a pharmacy, and its active ingredient is a drug. The mixing notes are straightforward; the calisaya is not.
- What calisaya isCalisaya is the yellow bark of Cinchona calisaya, the commercial source of quinine. "American Calisaya Extract" was a trade preparation of that bark, and its strength varied by house and by batch. Because that strength is unknown, six ounces in a gallon of syrup cannot be assumed to be a mere flavouring trace; it may well amount to a bitters-level dose.
- Why it cannot be made nowThere is no way to know how much quinine any modern cinchona extract or homemade bark tincture delivers per ounce of syrup. Quinine is dose-limited in beverages for good reason: in the United States it may be present in quinine-containing drinks only up to about 83 parts per million, a fraction of what a formula like this can reach.
- The specific harmExcess quinine causes cinchonism -- tinnitus, headache, visual disturbance, nausea. Separately, quinine can trigger an idiosyncratic immune thrombocytopenia in susceptible people at very small doses, which is why it is a prescription-controlled substance rather than a pantry bitter. If you want a quinine-flavoured fountain syrup, use a commercial tonic syrup made to a measured specification.
- Simple syrup, fountain strengthThe recipe does not say what it means by "simple syrup." Pharmacy and fountain simple syrups of the period were generally heavy, on the order of two parts sugar to one part water by weight. That is the kind of syrup the warning at the end appears to have in mind.
- The mixing note"Do not have your syrup too thick" is the one piece of practical advice in the formula. A dense syrup sits in a layer at the bottom of the glass and refuses to combine with carbonated water, which is drawn in cold and fast; a slightly thinner syrup disperses on the stream.
- ScaleA gallon of finished syrup at the usual fountain measure of one to one and a half ounces per glass is on the order of a hundred drinks. This is a jobbing quantity for a shop, not a household one.
Calisaya took its name, as Cinchona calisaya did, from the South American vernacular name for the Bolivian and Peruvian "yellow bark" that was the most prized commercial cinchona of the nineteenth century, and the word carried the whole prestige of quinine with it. Bitter tonics built on that bark -- Calisaya wines, Calisaya cordials, elixirs of iron and calisaya -- were sold in American drugstores as appetite-restorers and fever preventives, and the soda fountain in those same stores simply put the flavour on tap. That is why a syrup like this sits in a soda book at all: the fountain began as a dispensing counter, its syrups shelved alongside the tinctures, and orange extract here does the same work the sugar does, masking a bark that is genuinely hard to drink.