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Cherry Syrup (American Cherry Juice quart)
American Cherry Juice, 1 quart.
Add enough simple syrup to make 1½ gallons, 2 ounces American Fruit Acid and ¾ ounce American Soda Foam. If 10-pound syrup is used, add to the juice 2 pounds sugar, and dissolve by stirring or by slight heat, but avoid boiling.
This is a bulk soda-fountain formula, written for a dispenser who bought his flavourings from one supply house and measured syrup by weight of sugar per gallon. Scaling it down and translating the proprietary ingredients is most of the work.
- The hinge: no boilingHeat is allowed only to help the sugar dissolve ("by stirring or by slight heat, but avoid boiling"). Boiling drives off the volatile cherry aromatics and darkens the colour toward brown, and with acid present can invert the sugar, changing how the syrup behaves in the glass. Warm gently at most, and stir.
- "American" ingredients are brand namesAmerican Cherry Juice, American Fruit Acid and American Soda Foam read as a proprietary line sold under the "American" name rather than as generic categories. Fruit acid was a solution of citric or tartaric acid in water; soda foam was a foaming extract, commonly based on quillaia (soapbark) saponin, sold to give drawn sodas a lasting head.
- Substituting the foamerQuillaia extract is still a permitted food additive but is sold under strict use limits and is not a grocery item. Modern practice would leave it out entirely, or use a small quantity of a food-grade foaming agent sold for cocktails. Do not use an unlabelled vintage bottle of soda foam.
- The acidTwo ounces of fruit acid per gallon and a half is a tartness adjustment, not a preservative. A 50 percent citric acid solution, or citric acid crystals dissolved in an equal weight of water, gets you to the same place; start with half and taste, since cherry juices vary widely in their own acidity.
- "10-pound syrup"Fountain simple syrup was graded by pounds of sugar per gallon, so a "10-pound" syrup is at the thinner end of the range, hence the instruction to make up the difference with 2 pounds of loose sugar. If you are making your own, aim for a heavy simple syrup; the original's exact density cannot be pinned down.
- VolumesA quart is 32 fluid ounces; a gallon and a half is 192, so the juice is one part in six. The ounces of acid and foam are almost certainly fluid ounces, as fountain men measured liquids by the graduate.
- Yield and useA gallon and a half at the usual one to one and a half fluid ounces per glass is roughly 130 to 190 sodas. For home purposes divide by six: about 5 oz cherry juice, syrup to make one quart. Serve over ice with soda water, or use it on ice cream.
- KeepingSugar concentration is the only preservative here. Refrigerate anything you are not going through quickly, and expect the colour to fade within a few weeks.
Books like this one were half manual, half catalogue: they gave the fountain operator working formulas that happened to call for particular houses' own bottled juices, acids and foaming extracts by name. The soda fountain reached its commercial peak in America between the 1890s and the 1920s, when the druggist's counter was a social institution and a busy shop mixed its syrups by the gallon rather than the glass. Cherry was one of the staple fruit flavours alongside strawberry, raspberry and lemon, and the "soda foam" that gave the drawn glass its head is a reminder that the appearance of a fountain drink mattered nearly as much as its taste. The convention of grading simple syrup as "10-pound" or "14-pound" — pounds of sugar dissolved per gallon — was familiar in this trade, though such sugar-weight measures were also used in confectionery work.