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Champagne Fizz
Three-fourths glass plain soda, 1½ ounces champagne syrup, 1 dash liquid phosphate, ½ teaspoonful powdered sugar. Stir and serve quick.
A fountain drink from the era when "champagne" on a soda menu meant a flavoring syrup, not wine. It comes together in seconds, and the order of operations is the whole trick.
- No actual champagneChampagne syrup was a fountain flavor — typically a blend of citric or tartaric acid with fruit essences, sometimes cognac oil, tinted pale gold. The drink is alcohol-free. Modern soda-syrup makers still sell versions of it, and a lemon-and-orange syrup with a touch of extra acid stands in reasonably well.
- Liquid phosphateThis is acid phosphate, a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium and magnesium salts, used at fountains as a sour, faintly mineral counterweight to sweet syrup. It is sold again for cocktail and soda use. A dash means a few drops from a dasher bottle, not a teaspoon; it is aggressively tart.
- Plain sodaFountain "plain soda" was carbonated water drawn from the tap, and was generally strongly gassed. Use the coldest, liveliest soda water available and open it at the last moment.
- Glass sizeFountain glasses of the period varied, commonly somewhere between 8 and 12 ounces, so three-fourths glass is very roughly 6 to 9 ounces of soda against half an ounce of syrup. That is a lean, dry drink by modern soda standards.
- Half an ounce, or one and a halfThe original reads "½ ounces," which may be a typesetter's loss of a 1 before the fraction. Half an ounce of syrup in six or seven ounces of soda is thin by the standards of most fountain formulas, which tend to call for an ounce or more. Start at one ounce and adjust.
- The powdered sugarUndissolved sugar crystals give the carbonation something to break out on, so a dry spoonful stirred in at the end will raise a head of foam. Use superfine rather than confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch and will cloud the glass.
- Serve quickThe recipe says so plainly. Both the carbonation and the foam raised by the sugar fade fast, so stir once and hand the glass over at once.
- YieldOne glass. Mix each serving to order rather than batching.
Soda fountains of the 1890s and 1900s built a whole vocabulary out of borrowed drink names — champagne, claret, sherry, cobblers, fizzes — sold across the counter to customers who were not drinking, or not admitting to it. The "phosphate" family of fountain drinks depended on acid phosphate, promoted from the 1870s onward both as a flavoring and as a nerve tonic. The dry powdered sugar stirred in at the end releases a burst of foam at the moment of serving.