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Catawba Punch (One ounce Catawba syrup ounces)
One ounce Catawba syrup, 2 ounces sweet cream, a dash of rum or angostura bitters. Stir while filling with hot soda. Serve grated cinnamon.
A winter fountain drink built in the glass rather than cooked. The whole thing takes under a minute once the syrup and cream are measured.
- "Hot soda" is not fizzyWinter fountains drew plain hot water from a separate hot-draft arm rather than carbonated water. Use hot water from a kettle, just off the boil and allowed to settle for a moment.
- The hinge: pour slowly and keep stirringGrape syrup is acidic and very hot cream can curdle if the water hits it in a rush. Stir the syrup and cream together, then add the hot water in a thin stream while stirring; the original says only "stir while filling."
- Ounces are fluid ouncesOne ounce of syrup is 2 tablespoons, 2 ounces of cream is 1/4 cup. The recipe gives no total volume; filling to about 8 ounces, a mug's worth, is a reasonable guess.
- Catawba syrupA sweetened grape syrup made from the Catawba, a pink-skinned American grape with a distinct musky, foxy flavour. Concord grape syrup is the closest thing on a modern shelf; a good unsweetened Concord juice reduced with sugar is nearer still.
- Sweet creamMeans fresh, unsoured cream, as opposed to cultured or soured cream. Heavy or whipping cream works and its higher fat makes it more stable against the heat and acid; half-and-half is thinner and breaks more readily.
- Rum or bitters, not bothThe original offers them as alternatives. By modern bar convention a dash of bitters is about 1/8 teaspoon; a dash of rum, perhaps a teaspoon. They pull the drink in different directions, the rum rounder, the angostura drier and more medicinal.
- Grate the cinnamon freshThe original says only "serve grated cinnamon," but grating a stick over the finished glass throws off far more aroma than pre-ground cinnamon dusted on top. A microplane over the surface is the modern equivalent.
- YieldOne drink. Serve in a heatproof glass with a handle or a china mug; an ordinary cold glass may crack.
The Catawba grape was the great American wine grape of the mid-nineteenth century, planted heavily along the Ohio River and generally credited with launching Nicholas Longworth's Cincinnati sparkling wine trade in the 1840s. By the time soda fountains were codifying their syrup lists, the name had migrated to a non-alcoholic grape syrup that carried the same familiar musky flavour with none of the temperance objections. This drink belongs to the hot soda trade, a deliberate effort by fountain operators to keep the marble counter earning through the winter months when nobody wanted an ice-cream soda: hot beef tea, hot chocolate, hot ginger and hot fruit punches all appear in the same section of these books.