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Claret Syrup
American Claret Phosphate Concentrated Syrup 1 quart Plain Syrup, 3 quarts.
This is a fountain dilution formula rather than a cooking recipe: a proprietary concentrate cut with plain syrup to working strength. Everything hinges on knowing what the two components were.
- What it makesOne quart of concentrate plus three quarts of plain syrup gives a gallon of finished dispensing syrup. At the usual fountain draw of 1 to 1 1/2 fluid ounces per glass, that is roughly 85 to 128 drinks.
- Plain syrupThe fountain standard was a heavy simple syrup, commonly given as something in the region of 6 to 7 pounds of sugar to the gallon of water. A thin syrup will leave the finished product weak and prone to fermenting.
- Concentrated claret phosphateMost likely a supply-house concentrate bought in rather than compounded at the fountain, and in any case no longer made; the book here gives only the dilution. It combined a claret (red Bordeaux-style) flavouring, red colour, and acid phosphate. There is no direct modern substitute; the closest reconstruction is a red wine or grape flavouring plus acid phosphate to taste.
- Phosphate means acid, not fizzThe 'phosphate' is an acid phosphate solution: phosphoric acid with phosphate salts, giving a clean sourness unlike citric acid. Food-grade acid phosphate is still sold to bartenders and is dosed in fractions of a teaspoon, not by the ounce.
- Claret without wineFountain claret syrups were usually alcohol-free flavour imitations, though some formulas did use wine. Nothing here identifies which this was, so do not assume a wine syrup.
- ServingThe recipe gives no directions. Standard fountain practice for a phosphate was to draw the syrup into the glass first and then fill with carbonated water.
- KeepingFinished syrup at fountain sugar density holds for weeks in a cool, closed container, but modern kitchens should refrigerate it and watch for cloudiness or gas, which mean yeast has taken hold.
Phosphates were the dry, sour end of the American soda fountain, and by the 1890s many of the flavors on the board — lemon, cherry, orange, claret — seem to have had a phosphate version alongside their plain and cream forms. The acid itself is generally traced to Horsford's Acid Phosphate, made by the Rumford Chemical Works and sold to druggists both as a tonic and as a fountain ingredient; its selling point was a sourness that did not turn thin or metallic the way citric acid could. "Claret" here is a flavor idea rather than a wine: a red, faintly winey, astringent drink that arguably let a temperance-minded customer order something adult-tasting at the drugstore counter, though that reading is an inference rather than a documented motive. That the book gives only a dilution ratio is itself telling — by this period the dispenser bought flavor concentrates by the quart from supply houses, and his skill lay in cutting, drawing and serving them rather than compounding from scratch.