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Cherry Syrup
American Red Cherry Concentrated Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; American Fruit Acid, 1 ounce; American Soda Foam, if desired, ½ ounce. Chocolate Boshea.# One and a half ounces chocolate, plain cream, 2 spoonfuls malted milk, small amount ice cream, I beaten egg; shake well, strain and serve, sometimes with nutmeg.
Two unrelated fountain formulas run together on one page: a bulk cherry syrup built from trade goods, and a shaken chocolate drink built on a raw egg. The first is mostly a translation problem; the second is the reason for the warning above.
- The raw egg is the problemThe Chocolate Boshea is a whole beaten egg shaken cold with cream, malted milk, chocolate and ice cream, then strained and served. Nothing in it ever reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Egg drinks were common fountain items in this period; they are no longer safe to make from raw shell eggs. Use a current recipe if you want one, built on pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg.
- What "concentrated syrup" meantAmerican Red Cherry Concentrated Syrup appears to be a trade product bought ready-made, not fruit juice. The whole formula is a dilution instruction: one part concentrate to three parts plain syrup, which is why no sugar, fruit or cooking appears anywhere in it.
- Plain syrupIn fountain books this is simple syrup at fountain strength, a heavy sugar syrup. It was the neutral bulk that every flavour was cut with.
- American Fruit AcidA proprietary souring solution, usually citric or tartaric acid in water, sold to give bottled syrups the bite of fresh fruit. One ounce in a gallon is a small correction, not a flavour in its own right.
- Soda FoamAnother trade preparation, typically a saponin extract of quillaia bark, added so the drawn soda would hold a head. It is optional here; its modern equivalents are permitted in beverages only within regulated limits.
- VolumesThe syrup makes a full gallon of finished flavouring syrup. At the usual fountain measure of an ounce to an ounce and a half per glass, that is roughly a hundred drinks -- this is a shop formula, not a household one.
- "Boshea"A fountain-trade name for a shaken egg-and-milk drink. "Plain cream" most likely means plain sweet cream rather than whipped; the "small amount ice cream" appears to be there for body and cold, not sweetness.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were written for the dispenser behind the marble counter, not the cook, and it shows: the cherry syrup is an assembly job from four trade products. By 1900 the American fountain had become a small manufacturing operation with its own catalogue of concentrates, acids, foams and colours, and formula books existed mainly to standardise the ratios between them. The Boshea belongs to the other half of the trade, the drugstore counter that sold nourishment as much as refreshment a malted milk, cream, egg and ice cream shaken together looks to have been offered as a restorative for the thin and the convalescent, in the same spirit as the eggnogs and milk punches that druggists dispensed. Nutmeg on top is presumably an inheritance from those older egg drinks.