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Carnation Float
Juice of 1 lemon, powdered sugar, shaved ice, two-thirds glass, filtered water. Shake well. Pour into lemonade glass. Then float sufficient grape juice to fill glass. Top off with sliced fruit.
A layered fountain lemonade, built for looks as much as taste. The whole point is the band of grape juice sitting on top of the lemonade, so pour it slowly and do not stir.
- The hinge: float, do not mixDropped in fast, the grape juice will streak and muddy the lemonade rather than sit on it. Pour it over the back of a spoon held just above the surface, or down the inside of the tilted glass.
- "Two-thirds glass"Fountain lemonade glasses of the period ran roughly 10 to 12 oz, so this is somewhere in the region of 7 to 8 oz of water shaken with the lemon, sugar and ice. Fill the glass two-thirds and leave the top third for the juice and fruit.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain usage this meant fine granulated "fruit sugar," not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine or caster sugar dissolves cleanly in cold water; start with 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons per lemon and adjust.
- Shaved iceShaved or finely cracked ice chills fast and dilutes fast. Shake only long enough to dissolve the sugar, ten to fifteen seconds.
- The grape juiceBottled unfermented juice, most likely Concord, is the probable intention and is what still works: dark, sweet and opaque enough to read as a distinct layer. Unsweetened juice makes a sharper drink.
- Filtered waterLikely a nod to water of variable quality. Any drinkable cold water is fine; cold matters more than filtered, since warm water will churn the layers.
- Sliced fruitCitrus wheels with a cherry or a few berries suit the drink. Cut thin enough to sit on the surface rather than sink through the float.
- YieldOne glass. Multiply as needed, but shake and layer each drink separately or the float collapses.
Soda-fountain manuals of the early twentieth century used "float" loosely: it meant anything set on top of a drink rather than stirred through it, ice cream in some cases, a colored juice or syrup in others. Grape juice appears constantly in these books because commercially pasteurized, unfermented Concord juice had become cheap and widely distributed — the process is generally traced to the Welch family's work in New Jersey in the 1860s — and because the fountain trade was closely tied to the temperance movement, which wanted grapes without wine. The name here may describe the appearance rather than any flower flavoring: it is sometimes suggested that the pink-to-crimson bleed where dark juice meets pale lemonade was read as a carnation, though this is speculation rather than anything the sources establish.