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Clarique
Shaved Ice, ½ tumblerful; Claret, 2 ounces; Lemon Syrup, 1 ounce; Powdered Sugar, 3 teaspoonfuls. Draw soda water, large stream, and place a few strawberries on top. Careless clerks should not be employed at the soda fountain. Absolute neatness in dress should be insisted upon. Serve in a 12-ounce glass, half full of cracked ice. Add ½ ounce each of raspberry, red currant, lemon and claret syrups, and 1 ounce plain cream. Fill glass with carbonated water. Top with nutmeg. Serve with straws.
The text as printed runs two separate fountain drinks together, with a line of shop discipline wedged between them. Read it as two recipes: a claret-and-lemon soda finished with strawberries, and a creamy four-syrup soda finished with nutmeg.
- The two halvesEverything up to "strawberries on top" is one drink. "Serve in a 12-ounce glass" begins a second, which uses claret syrup — a bottled fountain flavouring syrup, made in period formularies sometimes with wine and sometimes without — rather than a straight measure of wine. Choose one; combining them gives you a muddy glass.
- Tumbler and glass sizesSoda tumblers of the period were commonly somewhere around 8 to 10 ounces, though sizes varied, so half a tumblerful of shaved ice is roughly 4 to 5 ounces by volume. The second drink specifies its own 12-ounce glass.
- ClaretClaret meant dry red Bordeaux, or any dry red sold in imitation of it. A modest Cabernet or Merlot blend works; the 2 ounces here is well under a standard wine pour.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was simple syrup at roughly equal weights sugar and water, acidulated with lemon juice or citric acid. Bottled lemonade concentrate is closer to it than lemon extract, which is far too strong.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain manuals this means finely ground granulated sugar, not modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Three teaspoons on top of an ounce of syrup makes a distinctly sweet drink; taste and cut back.
- "Draw soda water, large stream"Fountain apparatus had a coarse and a fine stream. A large stream was used to agitate and mix the syrup as the glass filled. A seltzer siphon or bottled soda poured briskly down the center of the glass does the same job.
- Cream with acid syrupsThe ounce of plain cream in the second drink will flock or curdle if it sits against the acid syrups before the water goes in. Add the cream last, on top of the syrups, and fill immediately with cold carbonated water.
- YieldEach version makes one drink.
The soda fountain of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an extension of the drugstore, and its manuals read accordingly: formulas by the ounce, a preoccupation with syrup stock, and, as here, instructions on the dispenser's dress and conduct alongside the recipes. Claret drinks were common at the fountain in this period — claret lemonade and claret punch turn up in many collections — because a small measure of dry red wine gave colour and a faint tannic edge to what was otherwise sugar, acid and gas. Coined names like "Clarique" were part of the trade's stock in hand, invented to fill a menu board and distinguish one shop's list from the next; they rarely denote anything fixed. Prohibition later removed wine from such formulas.