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Clove Syrup
One gallon of simple syrup, ½ ounce essence of clove, 2 ounces of soda foam. Color pink.
A fountain formula rather than a kitchen one: it makes a gallon of flavoring syrup to be drawn an ounce or so at a time and finished with carbonated water. Everything hinges on what the trade meant by "essence" and "foam."
- Essence is not essential oilFountain "essence of clove" was a dilute alcoholic solution of clove oil; strengths varied by maker, with pharmacopoeial spirits of clove around one part oil to nine of alcohol. Half an ounce of pure clove essential oil in a gallon would be aggressively medicinal and eugenol-harsh; if you are working from undiluted oil, you are dealing with a different material entirely and the quantity does not transfer.
- Simple syrup, fountain strengthSoda fountain simple syrup was heavy, commonly in the region of 6 to 8 pounds of sugar per gallon of finished syrup, denser than the 1:1 syrup usually meant by "simple syrup" today. A thin syrup will taste watery once it is cut with carbonated water at the glass.
- Soda foam"Soda foam" or foam extract was a saponin preparation, usually from quillaia (soapbark) or yucca, sold to give drinks a lasting head. Quillaia extract is still permitted as a beverage foaming agent in small amounts and can be bought; egg white is sometimes used as an improvised substitute and is not appropriate for a syrup that will sit.
- Color pinkThe period options were cochineal or the coal-tar dyes that predate modern colorant regulation. Use a current food coloring. The color is decorative rather than functional; the syrup itself would otherwise be close to colorless.
- Two ounces of foam is a small doseTwo ounces in 128 is roughly 1.5 percent, which is a head-building dose, not a flavoring one. Saponins are bitter in quantity; do not increase it to get more foam.
- Drawing and servingThe standard fountain pour was about 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces of syrup into a glass, then coarse or fine stream carbonated water to fill. A gallon at that rate is roughly 85 to 125 drinks — scale the whole formula down by eight or sixteen unless you are running a counter.
- KeepingA heavy sugar syrup keeps reasonably well, but the original assumed daily turnover in a covered fountain jar. Refrigerate a home batch and expect a few weeks, discarding at the first sign of cloudiness or fermentation.
Spice syrups were a standing category in American fountain practice, sitting alongside the fruit line as "tonic" or "aromatic" flavors: clove, ginger, sarsaparilla, birch, wintergreen. Part of the appeal was carryover from the drugstore counter, where the soda fountain often stood in the same premises as the dispensing pharmacy and clove had a long history in the materia medica as a carminative and toothache remedy. Syrups like this one were commonly used as modifiers as well as on their own, added to a lemon, a phosphate or a chocolate. The instruction to color it pink is a reminder that fountain work was showmanship as well as mixing.