Home › At the Fountain › Checkerberry Syrup
Checkerberry Syrup
(See Wintergreen Syrup.) Careless clerks should not be employed at the soda fountain. Absolute neatness in dress should be insisted upon. One ounce American Cherry Syrup, ½ ounce American Orangeade Syrup, a dash of acid phosphate, a dash of angostura bitters in a mineral glass; fill of angostura bitters in a mineral glass; fill with solid soda. Add a little shaved ice, I American Whole Cherry, and serve with a straw.
This entry is really two things run together: a one-line cross-reference for checkerberry syrup and, appended to it, the formula for a finished fountain drink built on cherry syrup. Read the second half as the working recipe.
- The garbled textThe line "a dash of angostura bitters in a mineral glass; fill of angostura bitters in a mineral glass; fill with solid soda" is a duplication (typesetting or transcription). Read it as one dash of bitters, one glass, filled with soda.
- Checkerberry means wintergreenCheckerberry is Gaultheria procumbens, the eastern teaberry, and the book simply points you to its wintergreen syrup entry. Note that concentrated oil of wintergreen (methyl salicylate) is genuinely toxic by the teaspoon; any modern wintergreen syrup should be made with a food-grade flavouring extract at its labelled dilution, never with the neat essential oil.
- MeasuresOne ounce is 2 tablespoons, half an ounce is 1 tablespoon. A "dash" from a fountain bottle is small, on the order of an eighth to a quarter teaspoon. Mineral glasses were tall fountain glasses; capacities varied, commonly somewhere around 8 to 12 ounces.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, sodium and magnesium salts, used to give fountain drinks a dry, tart edge that citrus alone does not provide. It is still produced for the cocktail trade and is not interchangeable with lemon juice.
- Solid sodaFountain draft arms gave a coarse foaming stream and a fine "solid" one. Solid soda means the still, unaerated-looking stream drawn straight into the glass — closest today to pouring chilled seltzer down the side rather than blasting it in.
- "American" syrupsThe capitalised names appear to be a proprietary brand name rather than distinct styles. Any decent cherry syrup and orangeade syrup will do; orangeade syrup is typically sweetened and acidulated, so a plain orange syrup will taste flatter.
- YieldOne glass. The shaved ice goes in after the soda, as the text directs, followed by the whole cherry and a straw.
Checkerberry is the New England name for the teaberry, and its flavour — wintergreen — was one of the founding tastes of the American soda fountain, alongside sarsaparilla, birch and vanilla. Fountain manuals of this period were part formula book, part trade catalogue and part conduct manual for the dispenser, which is why an instruction about clerks' dress sits between a cross-reference and a drink formula: the fountain was a druggist's counter, and its respectability was a selling point at a time when it was positioning itself as the temperance alternative to the saloon. Acid phosphate and angostura bitters both arrived at that counter from the pharmacy side of the business, tonics repurposed as flavouring, and the finished drink here — cherry, orange, acid and bitters over soda — is essentially a bar formula with the alcohol left out.