Home › At the Fountain › Cherry Blaze
Cherry Blaze
Place 1½ ounces of American Cherry Syrup (double strength) in a 6-ounce cup, and fill with hot water. Add grated nutmeg and whipped cream.
A hot fountain drink, not a soda — the whole thing is syrup, hot water and a cap of cream. It stands or falls on the strength of the syrup.
- 1½ ouncesFluid ounces, so 3 tablespoons of syrup. In a 6-ounce cup that leaves about ½ cup of hot water, which is why the syrup has to be concentrated.
- "Double strength"Fountain syrups were generally cut to a workable sweetness for carbonated water, and a double-strength syrup would have carried more flavour so it would not vanish in hot water; exactly how a given house made it up is not specified here. A commercial cherry syrup off the shelf today will taste thin -- use roughly half again as much, or reduce it briefly to concentrate it.
- Cherry syrup"American Cherry" probably points to a wild or black cherry flavour rather than the almond-scented maraschino type, though the recipe does not say. A dark, tart cherry syrup suits it better than a candied-cherry one.
- Water temperatureThe recipe says hot, not boiling. Water straight off a rolling boil will slacken the cream on contact, so let it come off the boil before pouring.
- The creamWhipped unsweetened and soft, spooned on rather than piped, so it sits on the surface. The drink is already sweet from three tablespoons of syrup.
- NutmegThe recipe names nutmeg before the cream, though grating it over the top is the usual fountain finish. Either way, grate it fresh: pre-ground nutmeg loses most of its point in a drink this simple.
- YieldOne 6-ounce serving. It scales directly if you are making several, but pour and cap them one at a time.
Soda fountains had a seasonal problem: cold drinks stopped selling in December, and the fountain still had to pay for its marble and its clerk. The answer was a hot-drink menu run off the same syrup rail -- hot chocolate, hot lemonade, beef tea, clam bouillon and a long list of flavored hot waters like this one, dispensed from a hot-water or steam faucet where the fountain had one. Names like "Blaze" belong to that trade: a fanciful label for what is essentially syrup and hot water, dressed up with cream and nutmeg. Cherry syrup itself came into the fountain by way of the drugstore, where wild cherry bark had long been a standard flavoring for cough preparations and bitter medicines, and it is often said that the pharmacist's flavoring shelf is what gave the American soda fountain its early repertoire.