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Cherry Jingle
Three ounces cherry syrup; 1 ounce lemon juice. Put several sprays of mint and half a glass of cracked ice in mixing glass, shake well sprays and add ice in mixing glass, shake well and add above. Strain into a 10-ounce glass and draw coarse stream. Decorate with cherry.
A fountain drink from the era when a soda clerk had two taps and a mixing glass. The text is garbled by a typesetter's duplication, but the sequence is clear: bruise the mint with ice, add syrup and juice, shake, strain, then charge with soda.
- "Draw coarse stream"Fountain heads had a fine (spray) stream and a coarse (heavy) stream. Coarse means a full, fast flow of plain carbonated water, used to fill the glass and stir the drink by force. Substitute cold seltzer poured quickly down the centre, about 6 ounces into a 10-ounce glass.
- Cherry syrupFountain cherry syrup was a heavy sugar syrup, considerably thicker and sweeter than a modern cordial, flavoured and coloured with cherry. Modern grenadine or a maraschino-cherry syrup is the nearest equivalent; a thin cordial will read as watery and sour against the ounce of lemon.
- The mint is the pointThe mint sprays go in with the ice and get shaken, not muddled to pulp and not merely floated. That short violent contact with cracked ice is what gives the drink its lift; skip it and this is only cherry-lemon soda.
- Cracked ice, not cubesHalf a glass of cracked ice means ice broken small with a mallet, which chills and dilutes fast in a brief shake. Whole cubes will not do the same work in the few seconds a fountain shake took.
- Strain, then chargeStrain the shaken mixture into the empty serving glass and add soda afterwards. Carbonating first and shaking second loses much of the gas.
- Proportions and yieldThree ounces syrup to one ounce lemon juice is sweet by modern taste. It makes one 10-ounce drink; cutting the syrup to two ounces gives a drier result without unbalancing it.
- GarnishA single cherry on the rim or dropped in the glass. A sprig of the shaken mint, slapped and set on top, is in keeping with the period style even though the text does not call for it.
Soda-fountain manuals of the early twentieth century ran to hundreds of numbered formulas, most of them variations on a syrup, an acid and carbonated water, distinguished mainly by name and garnish. "Jingle" was one of the stock fountain names of the period, and appears in the manuals attached to shaken, iced drinks of this type, though the label was not applied with any great consistency. Such names echoed the julep and mint-smash vocabulary of the licensed bar, and American fountains did build much of their trade on non-alcoholic versions of saloon drinks. The books were written for working clerks rather than home cooks, which is why the instructions assume a mixing glass, a two-stream tap and a set of syrup pumps, and why they rarely bother to say how much soda to draw.