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Cherry Cocktail (Into a phosphate or champagne)
Into a phosphate or champagne glass draw ½ ounce each of American Claret and American Red Cherry Syrup. Add a little shaved ice, a dash of Red Cherry Syrup. Add a little shaved ice, a dash of phosphate and a dash of angostura bitters. Stick an American Maraschino Cherry on the end of a wooden toothpick and float in the glass. Customer drinks, then eats cherry by the aid of the toothpick. If you use cherry phosphate syrup made from American Cherry Phosphate Extract you will not need claret syrup or bitters. "Quality rather than variety will make the reputation of the soda department of your business."
A fountain formula written for someone standing at a carbonator with a rack of syrups in front of him, so the most important step — the soda water — is left unsaid. Read it as a template rather than a full set of instructions.
- The missing stepNothing here tells you to charge the glass, because at a fountain that was automatic. Build the syrups and ice, then fill with cold carbonated water and stir once; without it you have two tablespoons of sweet syrup.
- "A dash of phosphate"This means acid phosphate, a dilute mixture of phosphoric acid and mineral phosphate salts used at fountains as a souring agent in place of citrus. It went out of general use mid-century but is made again for bar and fountain work. Modern practice puts a dash at roughly a quarter teaspoon, though fountain dash bottles were not standardised; it gives a dry, mineral tartness rather than a fruity one.
- American Claret syrupThe closing line calls it "claret syrup", so this is a bottled fountain syrup rather than a glass of wine; fountain claret syrups were generally non-alcoholic flavourings coloured and flavoured to suggest red wine, though formulas varied and some did use wine. A dark grape syrup with a drop of strong black tea is a workable household stand-in.
- GlasswareA phosphate glass is a straight-sided tumbler of roughly 6 to 8 ounces; a fountain champagne glass is a footed glass of about the same capacity. Either way this is a single small drink, not a tall soda.
- Shaved iceShaved, not cubed — it chills fast and melts into the drink, which is part of the intended dilution. Cubes in a glass this small leave the syrup unblended and the drink too sweet.
- AngosturaStill made to the same style and still the right thing here. One dash only; it is doing the work the tannin in real claret would do.
- The duplicated line"Add a little shaved ice" appears twice in the original, and the cherry syrup is called for twice over (½ ounce, then "a dash") — most likely a compositor's slip. Add the syrups once.
- The shortcut at the endThe shortcut near the end -- The penultimate sentence is the fountain man's real advice: a good cherry phosphate syrup already carries the colour and the bitter edge, so the claret syrup and bitters become redundant. Judge by taste rather than by adding all of it.
Soda fountains ran on syrups, carbonated water and acid phosphate, and the drink called a "phosphate" was a fountain staple. Books like this one were trade manuals, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter and usually published or underwritten by extract and syrup houses, which is why nearly every ingredient here is capitalised and labelled "American" — almost certainly the brand name of the extract house behind the manual — and the closing line about quality rather than variety is straightforwardly an advertisement for buying fewer, better syrups. The "cocktail" in the title is borrowed language, not a claim of alcohol; fountain men freely appropriated bar nomenclature, and the presence of angostura bitters and a cherry on a pick is a deliberate imitation of the saloon drink for customers who did not go to saloons. That mimicry became a whole genre after national Prohibition took effect in January 1920, but it was already well established in the fountain trade before then.