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Champagne de Menthe
One ounce champagne syrup, ½ ounce sweet mint syrup, 3 dashes phosphate. Fill with hot soda and add a slice of lemon, and, if obtainable, a and add a slice of lemon, and, if obtainable, a sprig of mint. Fresh mint leaves can usually be obtained from any first-class butcher shop.
A hot fountain drink from the era when soda counters served warm draughts through the winter months. Nothing here is alcoholic despite the name, and the whole thing takes about a minute to assemble.
- MeasuresFountain ounces are fluid ounces: 1 oz champagne syrup is 2 tablespoons, ½ oz mint syrup is 1 tablespoon. A "dash" from a fountain shaker bottle is roughly 1/8 teaspoon, so 3 dashes is a scant ½ teaspoon.
- Champagne syrupA flavouring syrup, not wine. Fountain formularies built it from sugar syrup with citric or tartaric acid and a fruit-ether flavour meant to suggest the taste of sparkling wine. It is hard to find today; a good lemon or citrus syrup with a pinch of extra acid is the nearest substitute.
- PhosphateThis is acid phosphate, a dilute phosphoric acid solution that fountains kept alongside the syrups for a dry, tart edge that lemon juice does not give. It is sold again for cocktail and soda work. Without it the drink reads as flatly sweet.
- Hot sodaFountains had a hot draught arm that dispensed plain hot water, not carbonated water; carbonation will not survive heat anyway. Use hot water just off the boil, filling the mug as the recipe directs.
- Sweet mint syrupProbably the fountain's non-alcoholic creme de menthe syrup, though the recipe says only mint. Any peppermint syrup works, but check whether yours is spearmint or peppermint flavoured, as the two pull the drink in quite different directions.
- The mint from the butcherPresumably butchers kept fresh mint to sell with lamb, which would explain why the book sends you there. A sprig from the produce aisle or a windowsill pot does the same job; slap it once between the palms before dropping it in to release the oils.
- YieldOne mug; the recipe does not state a size. Serve with the lemon slice as directed.
Hot soda was a real commercial category, not a curiosity: American fountains faced a documented seasonal slump every winter until operators added heated draught arms and a menu of hot beefy bouillons, hot chocolates, hot lemonades and hot fruit drinks to carry the counter through to spring. This one belongs to a family of temperance drinks named after wines and liqueurs — champagne, crème de menthe, claret — whose whole appeal was that a customer could order something sophisticated-sounding without alcohol, a marketing habit the fountain trade leaned on hard in the decades before and during Prohibition. Acid phosphate, the third ingredient here, was the fountain's workhorse souring agent, and the phosphate drink was so common that the word became a genus of its own on soda menus. The aside about the butcher is the most telling line on the page: fresh herbs were not a year-round grocery item, and mint was to be had where it was kept for the lamb trade.