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One-half ounce claret syrup, ½ ounce Catawba syrup, 1 dram solution acid phosphates. Serve like phosphates.
A two-syrup fountain drink built on acid phosphate, meant to be drawn and served exactly as a plain phosphate would be. The measures are fluid measures, and the whole thing takes under a minute once the syrups are on hand.
- The measuresHalf an ounce is one tablespoon, so the two syrups together come to two tablespoons. A fluid dram is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, near enough to three-quarters of a teaspoon.
- "Serve like phosphates"The assumed method: syrups and acid phosphate into a fountain glass, a splash of fine carbonated water, stir, then fill with a coarse stream to raise the head. Ice practice varied; some fountains drew the drink over shaved ice, others added it after.
- Acid phosphateSolution of acid phosphates is a dilute phosphoric acid preparation, still made for bar and fountain use. It gives a dry, mineral sourness quite unlike lemon juice or citric acid, and there is no true substitute; a citrus acid will make a different drink.
- Claret syrupA red-wine-flavoured fountain syrup on a simple syrup base. Period formulas run both ways: some use actual claret (a loose American term for red wine generally), others an imitation grape-and-berry flavouring. A rich grape or black-currant syrup is the closest modern stand-in.
- Catawba syrupMade from the Catawba, an American labrusca-type grape with the musky "foxy" character familiar from Concord grape juice. Any unsweetened Concord juice cooked down with sugar gets you in the neighbourhood.
- Sweetness balanceFountain syrups of the period were generally heavy, though formulas varied from about equal parts sugar and water by weight up to near-saturated. If you are using a lighter modern syrup, expect the phosphate to dominate and cut it back accordingly.
- YieldOne glass. The recipe gives no glass size; a standard fountain glass would put it in the region of 8 ounces finished.
Soda fountain formularies like this one were written for the dispenser behind the counter, which is why the instruction is simply "serve like phosphates" — the mechanics were assumed knowledge, and only the flavour combination needed writing down. Acid phosphate was the house sour of the American fountain from the 1870s onward, promoted first as a nerve tonic and then kept on simply because it made sweet syrups taste less cloying. The Catawba grape had been a point of American pride since the mid-nineteenth century, when Ohio River valley plantings made it the basis of a domestic wine industry, and its name survived on fountain syrup labels long after the vineyards declined. The drink's name is presumably a coinage off "claret" — fountain books are full of these invented, faintly French-sounding names, which cost nothing to make up and gave a shop something to chalk on the board.