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Claret Cup
One-half glass shaved ice, 2 ounces claret syrup, juice of 1 lemon. Fill with soda, stir, add slice orange or lemon. Straws.
A fountain drink built in the glass, not a punch bowl. It takes about a minute to assemble once you have the syrup and cold soda water on hand.
- What size glassSoda-fountain glasses of this era ran in a range of sizes, commonly somewhere between 8 and 12 ounces. Half filled with shaved ice, a glass at the larger end leaves room for the 2 ounces of syrup, the lemon juice, and a few ounces of soda water.
- Claret syrupA fountain syrup, not wine poured from the bottle. It was made by simmering claret (dry red Bordeaux, or any dry red) with sugar to a heavy syrup, sometimes with a little citric acid; some houses used a non-alcoholic red fruit syrup under the same name. Two ounces of a bottled grape or red-berry syrup is the closest ready-made substitute.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved or finely crushed ice chills fast and dilutes as it melts, which is part of the effect. Cubes chill more slowly and make the drink read more like a highball.
- Juice of one lemonLemons vary; if yours is large and juicy, hold some juice back or the claret flavour disappears behind the acid.
- "Fill with soda"Charged water from a fountain, delivered under pressure, which did much of the mixing. From a bottle or siphon, pour down the side of the glass to keep the carbonation, then stir once from the bottom up with a long spoon.
- Order of operationsIce, then syrup, then juice, then soda. Adding soda before the syrup gives you foam that overflows before the glass is full.
- YieldOne drink. The recipe scales cleanly, but build each glass individually rather than batching, or the carbonation goes flat before service.
Claret cup began as a British summer drink of red wine, lemon, sugar, ice and soda water, served from a jug at summer gatherings through the nineteenth century. American soda fountains, often said to have been competing by the end of the century with the saloon, took over the names of such wine cups and rebuilt them around bottled syrups and charged water, so a customer could order a claret cup at a drugstore counter and get something that looked and tasted like the original without much or any alcohol. Fountain manuals of the period are full of these translations, alongside sherry cobblers, hock cups and mint juleps rendered in syrup. The straws at the end of the entry are not decoration but a practical note: shaved ice packed to the rim leaves no other way to drink it.