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Chamgagne Kola
A Prize Formula.
Grape Jelly*, 1 lb.; Acid Tartaric, 1 dram.
Dissolve both in a little hot water, strain and mix with Extract Kola fl, 5 drams; Extract Vanilla, 3 drams; Ether Acetic, 5 drops; Ether Perlargonic, 5 drops; Rock Candy Syrup, 1 gallon. Serve without foam. *Fine grape jelly can be obtained in Boston in 27-pound sealed pails at 11 cents per pound. Soda water is a veritable luxury and, when proper materials are used and the drink is scientifically dispensed, there is nothing half so delicious. At all times use At all times use "American Whole" and Crushed Fruits," "Concentrated Fruit Syrups," "Fruit Phosphates," "Fruit Floss," etc., as they are the very best that can be obtained.
This is a bulk soda-fountain syrup, not a finished drink: a gallon of flavored base to be drawn an ounce or so at a time and hit with carbonated water. Most of the work is in translating apothecary measures and in sourcing the two ester flavorings that give the "champagne" character.
- Drams, two kindsThe tartaric acid is a weight dram; the apothecaries' dram is about 3.9 g (the avoirdupois dram, by contrast, is about 1.77 g). The extracts are fluid drams, about 3.7 mL each, so 5 fluid drams of kola extract is roughly 18 mL and 3 of vanilla about 11 mL. Getting these two units backwards will wreck the balance.
- The esters are the whole pointAcetic ether (ethyl acetate) and pelargonic ether (ethyl pelargonate, sometimes ethyl nonanoate) are what suggest wine and effervescence in a drink with no alcohol in it. Buy only material sold as a food-grade flavoring ester; hardware-store or laboratory ethyl acetate is a solvent and has no place in a drink.
- Rock candy syrupIn the fountain trade generally a heavy simple syrup, near saturation at roughly two parts sugar to one part water by weight, boiled and skimmed clear; some formulas did use rock candy itself. Ordinary 2:1 simple syrup is the modern equivalent.
- Strain the jelly properlyGrape jelly is set with pectin, and undissolved jelly will cloud the syrup. Dissolve the jelly in hot water until genuinely liquid and pass it through a fine sieve or muslin before it cools, as the recipe directs.
- Kola extractA caffeinated extract of kola nut, standard fountain stock in 1900 and still sold by flavor houses. Five fluid drams in a gallon of syrup is a light hand; the drink is a grape-champagne, not a cola.
- "Serve without foam"Fountain operators kept a foam solution, often saponin or a quillaia (soapbark) extract, to give certain drinks a head. Here the direction is simply to draw it plain.
- Yield and dispensingOne gallon of syrup gives roughly 100 to 128 servings at 1 to 1.25 fl oz per 8 oz glass, topped with cold carbonated water. Keep the finished syrup refrigerated; it has no preservative beyond sugar and acid.
- The footnoteThe 27-pound sealed pail at 11 cents a pound is trade pricing for a Boston source, not an instruction. Any good grape jelly will do, though a tart one suits the tartaric acid better than a very sweet one.
By the time this formula was printed, the American soda fountain was a competitive business and trade journals ran prize contests for new dispensing formulas, which may be what "A Prize Formula" signals here. Naming a soft drink after champagne was a standard commercial move: the wine notes came from esters like acetic and pelargonic ether, which perfumers and flavor chemists are generally said to have used from about the mid-nineteenth century to imitate fruit and wine aromas, and the tartaric acid supplied the sharp grape acidity found naturally in wine. Kola extract is usually traced to fountain syrups in the 1880s and seems to have been still novel enough in the 1900s to sell a drink on its own name, valued as much for its reputed tonic and stimulant effect as for flavor. The closing paragraph, with its capitalized product lines, is straightforward advertising, and it is a fair reminder that these compendia were as much catalogs as manuals.