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Caramel Nut Sundae
Mix equal parts of pecans, English and black walnuts, pignolia and pistachio nuts. Chop together and mix with an extra heavy caramel syrup. Pour over plain ice cream and you have a delicious sundae.
A fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: it assumes you already have a jar of caramel syrup on the counter and a tub of vanilla in the cabinet. Two terms need translating before you start.
- "Extra heavy" syrupAt the soda fountain, syrup weight meant sugar density, measured on a hydrometer in degrees Baume. A heavy syrup was denser than the standard fountain stock -- more sugar to water, thick enough to coat a spoon. A modern jarred caramel or dulce de leche loosened with a spoonful of cream is the same thing in practice.
- PignoliaPine nuts, from the Italian pignoli. They were sold in bulk to confectioners and are still easy to find, though they are usually the most expensive nut in this mixture.
- Black walnutsNot interchangeable with the English walnut listed alongside them. Juglans nigra is more assertive, almost medicinal, and the recipe wants both for contrast. Sold shelled in pieces; a small amount goes a long way.
- Toast the nutsThe original does not call for it. Ten minutes at 350F on a dry sheet, cooled completely before chopping, makes the difference between a nut topping and a damp one; watch the pine nuts and pistachios, which colour faster than the rest.
- Chop, do not grind"Chop together" means a coarse hand chop. A food processor turns pine nuts and pistachios to paste in seconds and the syrup will go muddy.
- Proportions and yieldEqual parts of five nuts at 2 tablespoons each gives about two-thirds of a cup of chopped nutmeat, enough for six to eight sundaes with roughly a quarter cup of syrup folded in.
- Serve barely warmNuts in cold heavy syrup set into a solid block. Warm the mixture gently so it pours, but not hot enough to melt a trench through the ice cream.
- SaltIf your nuts are unsalted, a pinch of fine salt in the syrup keeps the caramel from reading as flatly sweet.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the cook at home, which is why the instructions read as a formula and assume a stock of prepared syrups at hand. The sundae itself dates to the 1880s or 1890s in the American Midwest, and is often said to have begun as a Sunday workaround in towns where selling soda water on the Sabbath was frowned upon, though the story is traditional rather than documented and several cities claim it. What is clear from a recipe like this one is how far the drugstore fountain had come by the early twentieth century: five kinds of nut, including imported pine nuts and pistachios, kept in bulk simply to dress a dish of plain vanilla. It is tempting to read the elaborate multi-nut mixture as a way of signalling quality in a business where every competitor down the street sold the same ice cream, though that is inference rather than something the manual tells us.