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Cherry Phosphate (Draw ounces above cherry)
Draw 1½ ounces above cherry phosphate syrup in a mineral glass, fill with solid soda and stir.
A fountain formula written for a soda jerk standing at a draft arm, not for a home cook. Almost every term in it refers to fountain equipment, so the translation is mostly a matter of decoding the vocabulary.
- "Draw 1½ ounces above"Fountain syrups were dispensed by pump strokes or drawn from gravity jars. The sense of "above" here is unclear; it is usually read as the syrup going into the glass first, before the soda. Measure 1½ fl oz (3 tablespoons) of syrup into the bottom of the glass.
- Mineral glassA straight-sided fountain tumbler of roughly 8 to 10 ounces. Any tall glass of that capacity works; the ratio is about one part syrup to five of soda.
- "Solid soda"The coarse stream from the fountain's draft arm, which delivered carbonated water with little foam, as distinct from the fine stream. Use plain, cold, hard-carbonated seltzer poured down the side of the glass.
- Cherry phosphate syrupThis is cherry syrup with acid phosphate added, not phosphate of soda. Acid phosphate is a dilute food-grade phosphoric acid preparation, still manufactured for bar use; it gives a dry, mineral tartness that citric acid does not. Without it the drink is simply cherry soda.
- Proportion of acidModern acid phosphate recipes generally use somewhere between a quarter and half an ounce per drink, either premixed into the syrup or dashed in separately. Start low; it is sharp.
- Stirring carbonated drinksA single pass with a long spoon is enough; vigorous stirring drives off the gas. Fountain spoons were often slotted or perforated.
- TemperatureThe original assumes soda water chilled in the fountain's coils to near freezing. Chill the seltzer and the glass; a room-temperature phosphate goes flat and tastes syrupy.
- YieldOne glass.
The phosphate was a soda fountain staple from the 1870s through the 1930s, built on acid phosphate, a preparation generally traced to Eben Horsford's work on phosphoric acid at Harvard and sold commercially to druggists as both a tonic and a flavoring acid. Fountains were attached to drugstores, and the acid did double duty: it lent a clean sourness that made cheap fruit syrups taste brighter, and it carried a vague medicinal respectability at a time when soda water was still half remedy. Cherry was one of the common phosphate flavors, alongside lemon, orange and grape. Books like this one were trade manuals, written in the compressed shorthand of a working dispenser who was expected to know what "solid soda" meant.