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Cherry Nectar
American Red Cherry Concentrated Syrup, 1 quart; American Nectar Concentrated Syrup, 1 quart; Simple Syrup, 6 quarts; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce.
This is a fountain compounding formula rather than a kitchen recipe: two proprietary flavour concentrates cut with simple syrup and dosed with a foaming agent, mixed by the gallon and then drawn an ounce at a time under carbonated water. Almost everything in it needs translating.
- Yield and scaleThe batch comes to eight quarts — two gallons — of finished dispensing syrup, enough for roughly 200 to 250 glasses at the draw described below. Divide the whole formula by eight for a quart, which is a more realistic home quantity.
- What "Concentrated Syrup" meantThese were branded fountain concentrates, sold to be diluted, not flavourings in the modern extract sense. There is no direct substitute on a supermarket shelf; a strong cherry syrup and a commercial "nectar" or fruit-punch syrup used at roughly a quarter of the total volume will get you to the same place.
- Nectar flavourFountain "nectar" was not a single fruit but a compounded blend; period formulas under that name commonly involve some combination of pineapple, banana, vanilla and a trace of almond or peach, though the make-up varied by supplier.
- Simple syrupFountain simple syrup was generally heavier than the modern kitchen kind, often well above a one-to-one ratio by weight. A modern one-to-one syrup will leave the finished drink thinner and less sweet, and will not keep as long.
- American Soda FoamA saponin foaming preparation, usually an extract of quillaia (soap bark), sold to give drawn soda a lasting head. Quillaia extract is still permitted in beverages at low levels, but the half-ounce here is dosed against two gallons of syrup and then diluted again in the glass. If you cannot source a food-grade foamer, leave it out; the drink loses head but nothing else.
- How it was servedAbout 1 to 1¼ fluid ounces of this syrup went into the glass first, then carbonated water drawn in a coarse stream to raise the foam. That is roughly a 1:6 or 1:7 syrup-to-water ratio.
- Keeping itSugar at fountain strength is largely self-preserving, but these syrups were turned over in days, not months. A diluted modern version should be refrigerated and treated as perishable, especially if you have used a low-sugar syrup.
The American Soda Book belongs to a genre that barely reads as cookery now: the fountain manual, written for the dispenser behind a marble counter rather than for a cook. By the 1890s and 1900s the American drugstore soda fountain was a serious commercial operation, and its flavours often came from proprietary concentrates bought from supply houses whose names appear in these formulas as if they were ingredients — which, to the operator, they were. A book like this exists to tell him what to blend with what, in what proportion, and the recipes are accordingly bare lists. Here cherry and "nectar" are combined, cherry supplying the colour and bite and nectar a vague, compounded fruitiness. The foaming agent suggests showmanship as much as refreshment: a head on the glass was part of the appeal at a time when a glass of soda commonly sold for five cents.