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Citric Phosphate
Make a solution of the following proportions: American Citric Phosphate, 6 ounces; boiling water, 15 ounces. Dissolve thoroughly, and filter through fine flannel, felt, or paper; dispense from an essence bottle, about 1 dram to a tumbler.
This is a fountain stock solution rather than a finished drink: you make a bottle of acid concentrate once, then dose it by the dram into glasses of syrup and carbonated water. Almost everything that needs translating here is a unit or a product name.
- What the drink actually isThe finished phosphate is a tumbler of soda water with an ounce or so of flavoring syrup, dosed with this acid solution and drawn with carbonated water. The acid does not flavor the drink so much as sharpen it, the way a squeeze of lemon lifts a sweet syrup.
- American Citric PhosphateA trade product of the period, a blended citric and phosphoric acid preparation sold to fountain operators; the exact formula varied by maker and is not recoverable. The closest current equivalent is a bottled acid phosphate sold for bar use, which is already dilute and generally does not need the further dilution given here.
- Use food-grade acid onlyIf you build your own concentrate rather than buying one, only food-grade phosphoric and citric acid belong in it. Technical or laboratory phosphoric acid is not a substitute and has no place at a fountain.
- A dramA fluid dram is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, roughly 3.7 mL, about three-quarters of a teaspoon. Fountain tumblers were commonly around 8 ounces, though sizes varied by house.
- YieldSix ounces of concentrate in fifteen ounces of water gives a bit over a pint of working solution, which at one dram a glass is something like 150 servings. Scale down hard unless you are actually running a counter.
- FilteringThe flannel or felt bag is there to catch undissolved sediment from the commercial powder so the finished glass is bright. A coffee filter or fine paper does the same job; let it drip rather than forcing it.
- The essence bottleA small stoppered bottle with a graduated pourer or a dropper measure, kept at the rail. Any dark glass bottle with a measured pour spout works; label it, since an unmarked bottle of clear acid on a back bar is a hazard of its own.
- KeepingThe solution is acidic enough to be stable at room temperature, but it was made in fountain volumes and turned over fast. A small batch kept cold and used within a few weeks is the sensible modern approach.
Phosphates were a large family of American fountain drinks, and they owe their character to a druggist's acid rather than to any fruit. The trade is generally traced to Horsford's Acid Phosphate, a phosphoric acid preparation made by the Rumford Chemical Works and marketed from the 1870s as a tonic; a few drops in a sweet syrup gave a dry, tart bite, and the cherry phosphate and lemon phosphate became counter staples for decades afterward. Trade manuals like this one were written for the dispenser, not the housekeeper, which is why the instruction is to make up a stock bottle and measure by the dram: the recipe assumes a counter, a carbonator, and a high turnover. The taste survives in cola, whose characteristic edge still comes from phosphoric acid.