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Cherry Glace
Take a 5-ounce sherbet glass, fill with shaved ice, add 1 ounce cherry syrup and a dash of acid phosphate, and top off with 3 or 4 of American Maraschino Cherries. This makes one of the nicest drinks for a hot day that can be served at the fountain. If your fountain is small, serve the well-known popular flavors. Do not attempt to introduce new drinks.
A fountain drink rather than a soda: no carbonated water at all, just syrup and acid over shaved ice. It stands or falls on the ice, which must be shaved fine enough to take up the syrup like a snow cone.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, a fountain staple of the period for the dry tartness it gives without the fruit flavour of lemon juice. It is still made for the cocktail trade; a dash is roughly 1/8 teaspoon. Lemon juice is not the same thing but is the nearest household substitute.
- The glassA 5-ounce sherbet glass is a small stemmed bowl, about the size of a modern coupe. Any 5-6 oz stemmed glass works; the drink is meant to be eaten with a spoon as much as drunk.
- Shaved ice, not crushedCrushed ice leaves channels and the syrup runs to the bottom. Shave or blend the ice to a dry snow and pack it lightly into the glass before the syrup goes on.
- Cherry syrupOne ounce is two tablespoons. Fountain cherry syrup of the period was a heavy sweet syrup, flavoured and coloured; modern soda syrups may be thinner, so you may want a little more.
- American maraschino cherriesIn 1900s trade language this meant a domestic cherry brined in sulphur dioxide and lime, then dyed and sweetened, as distinguished from Italian marasca cherries preserved in liqueur. Either will do here, though the liqueur-packed sort gives a far better drink.
- YieldOne glass. Serve at once with a spoon and a straw; it collapses into cherry water within a few minutes.
- The closing adviceThe last two sentences are counsel to the soda clerk, not part of the method: small fountains are told to stick to the well-known flavours rather than introduce new drinks.
The soda fountain of the early twentieth century was a pharmacy department, and acid phosphate is the clearest surviving trace of that: it came from the druggist's shelf, was sold as a tonic in its own right, and was carried over into drinks because a sour note keeps heavy sugar syrup from cloying. A glace at the fountain was a drink built on shaved ice — no carbonation, no cream, just syrup poured over snow, cheap to serve and quick to make in a rush. The call for American maraschino cherries points to the domestic sulphured-and-dyed cherry, which was displacing the imported Italian sort preserved in maraschino liqueur, a shift that accelerated further under Prohibition.