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Claret Klondike
Fill sherbet glass with finely shaved ice, pour over the ice 1 ounce claret syrup, and garnish with a slice of lemon. Serve with spoon.
A shaved-ice drink from the soda fountain rather than the bar, and it stands or falls on the texture of the ice. Everything else is assembly.
- Claret syrup is not wineClaret syrup was usually not wine -- Fountain "claret syrup" was generally a non-alcoholic flavouring: sugar syrup coloured and flavoured to suggest red wine, commonly on a grape or berry base, sometimes with a little citric acid and a trace of aromatic tincture. Any dark grape or black-currant syrup gives much the same effect.
- The ice is the recipeFinely shaved ice means snow-fine, not crushed cubes. A shaved-ice machine or a blade-style ice shaver gives the right powdery texture; cubes battered in a bag will drain into slush and the syrup will sink straight to the bottom.
- One ounceThat is two tablespoons, which sounds meagre but is correct against a small glass of ice. Fountain syrups of the period ran near the saturation point of sugar, far sweeter than a modern cordial, so taste before increasing it.
- Sherbet glassA footed, wide-bowled glass of roughly 5 to 6 ounces — closer to a modern coupe or small dessert glass than to a tumbler. Mound the ice slightly above the rim before pouring.
- PouringPour the syrup slowly over the whole surface rather than in one spot so the colour bleeds down evenly. The recipe gives no instruction to stir, and leaving it unstirred keeps the colour graded through the white ice.
- ServingOne glass, and it should go out the moment it is made. Shaved ice collapses within a few minutes, and the spoon called for is what makes it drinkable once it does.
Klondike drinks turn up in fountain manuals in the wake of the 1897-98 Yukon gold rush, when "Klondike" was attached to all manner of things meant to suggest snow and ice. "Claret" here is a flavour idea rather than an ingredient: American soda fountains built a whole vocabulary of wine and spirit names — claret, port, sherry, champagne — for syrups that contained no alcohol, which suited temperance-minded towns and remained useful under Prohibition. Recipes of this type are less formulas than assembly instructions for a counterman working from a rack of prepared syrups, which is why the syrup itself is simply named and never explained.