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Champagne-Ade
One-half glass shaved ice, 2 ounces orange cider, ½ dram fruit acid solution, 2 spoonfuls powdered sugar. Add soda water, stir, serve with straws.
A fountain drink built in the glass, not a bottled beverage — despite the name there is no wine in it, and no champagne. The whole effect rests on the tartness of the acid solution against the sugar, so measure that first.
- DramA fluid dram is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, about 3.7 ml, so half a dram is roughly 1/16 oz — a scant half teaspoon. The quantity is small because the solution is strongly acidic; the recipe does not say how it was measured out.
- Fruit acid solutionA standing fountain preparation, usually citric or tartaric acid dissolved in water at around one ounce of acid to four or five ounces of water. Its job here is to mimic the sharp bite of sparkling wine; bottled lemon or lime juice will read as lemonade rather than "champagne" but is the practical substitute.
- Orange ciderNot cider in the apple sense. Fountain "ciders" were sweetened, slightly acidulated fruit syrups, drawn like any other syrup — an orange syrup with some tang is the nearest modern stand-in.
- SpoonfulThe measure is the fountain's own sugar spoon, whose capacity the recipe does not state; about two teaspoons is a reasonable working reading. Given that the orange cider is already sweet, taste before adding the second.
- Powdered sugarAt this period this generally meant finely ground sugar without added cornstarch, closer to today's superfine or caster sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar carries starch that will cloud the drink.
- Soda waterFountain soda water was generally carbonated harder than modern bottled club soda. Use the coldest, most aggressively carbonated water you have, and pour gently to keep as much gas as possible.
- Glass and yield"One-half glass shaved ice" means half-filling whatever fountain glass is used; sizes varied. One recipe makes one drink.
- Order of workIce, syrup, acid and sugar go in first and get the soda last, with the barest stir — enough to dissolve the sugar off the bottom and no more.
Fountain drinks named for wines and spirits were a whole genre in the American soda book era: champagne-ades, claret phosphates, sherry cobblers and "punches" that contained nothing stronger than carbonated water. Part of the appeal was straightforward imitation — the drugstore fountain sold the shape of a fashionable drink to customers who could not or would not order the real thing — and part was the temperance movement's steady pressure through the 1880s and 1890s, which gave soda fountains both a moral standing and a commercial opening. The acid solution does much of the work of the illusion: carbonation plus a clean sharp acid reads on the palate as something like dry sparkling wine. Fountain dispensers kept citric and tartaric acid solutions, and phosphoric acid "acid phosphate," among their standing supplies.