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Celery Syrup
American Concentrated Celery Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; Fruit Acid, 1 ounce. We recommend the use of American Concentrated Syrups, as they require no compounding, except dilution with simple syrup. The best formulas for their use will be found under the proper headings.
This is a fountain dispenser's dilution formula rather than a from-scratch recipe: it assumes you have bought a concentrate and only need to cut it. The proportions still work if you substitute a celery extract or your own celery infusion for the trade concentrate.
- Plain syrup"Plain" or "simple" syrup in the fountain and druggist trade was often much heavier than a modern bar cook's 1:1; the pharmacopoeial syrup used by many druggists was close to saturation, though lighter trade formulas were also common. Cut with a thin syrup and the drink will taste watery.
- Fruit acidGenerally a solution of citric or tartaric acid; period formula books give it both as a prepared solution and as the crystalline acid, so the strength intended here is uncertain. If working from powdered citric acid, add cautiously and taste.
- The concentrate"American Concentrated Celery Syrup" was a branded flavouring base and has long since vanished. Modern equivalents are celery seed extract or a strong infusion of bruised celery seed in simple syrup; celery seed, not the stalk, carries the flavour that fountains were after.
- YieldFour quarts — one gallon — of finished syrup, which is a soda fountain's working batch rather than a household one. Scale to a pint of concentrate to a quart and a half of plain syrup if you want a manageable quantity.
- ServingFountain practice generally ran to about 1 to 1.5 ounces of syrup in the glass, filled with carbonated water. The original gives no serving direction.
- Keeping itThe sugar concentration and the acid are the only preservatives here. Refrigerate a home batch and treat it as a few weeks' syrup, not a shelf-stable one.
Celery was one of the standard "tonic" flavours of the late nineteenth-century soda fountain, sitting alongside sarsaparilla, birch beer and kola in a trade that still presented itself as half pharmacy. Celery and celery seed were widely credited in period materia medica with calming the nerves and settling digestion, which is why a druggist could dispense a celery soda with a straight face; the best-known survivor of the fashion, Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, is traditionally traced to a New York bottler in the 1860s. What this entry really documents is the industrialisation of the fountain: the compiler is not teaching a flavour at all but advertising that compounding from raw materials had become unnecessary, since concentrated syrups arrived by the case and needed only sugar syrup and acid to bring them to strength.