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Coco Caramel Sundae
Four ounces grated cocoanut, 4 ounces English walnuts, ½ gallon caramel , 1½ dozen mashed bananas. syrup, ½ dozen mashed bananas. Color pink. Mix well and serve ice Color pink. Mix well and serve ice cream in sundae glass. Pour I ladleful of the mixture over the ice cream.
A soda-fountain topping built in fountain quantities: half a gallon of caramel syrup is a service batch meant to sit in a crock and be ladled out all afternoon. Scale it down hard for home use.
- ScaleHalf a gallon of caramel syrup with 4 oz each of coconut and walnuts makes roughly forty to sixty sundaes at a ladleful apiece. A tenth of the recipe — about ¾ cup syrup, 2 tablespoons coconut, 2 tablespoons nuts, one mashed banana — gives four to six servings.
- The banana quantityThe line giving the bananas appears twice in the original with two different amounts, so the intended proportion is not recoverable. Judge by texture: enough mashed banana to thicken the syrup without turning it into a purée.
- Caramel syrupFountain caramel syrup was a thin pourable sugar syrup cooked to caramel, not the thick dairy caramel sauce sold today. If you use modern caramel sauce, thin it with a little hot water so a ladle will pour cleanly over cold ice cream.
- Grated cocoanut'Grated' could mean fresh-grated or dried shredded; both were available, as was sweetened shredded coconut. Unsweetened is the safer choice here, since sweetened flake will push an already sweet syrup over the edge. Chop it short so it does not hang off the spoon.
- English walnutsThe ordinary walnut, as distinct from the black walnut then common in America. Chop fine and toast briefly for flavour, since untoasted nuts sitting in syrup go soft.
- "Color pink"Fountain practice meant a few drops of carmine or a commercial fountain colour, purely cosmetic. Omit it, or use a little strawberry or raspberry syrup, which at least contributes flavour.
- Holding the mixtureMashed banana in an uncovered crock browns quickly and will not hold well through a day at room temperature. Mix only what will be served at once, and refrigerate anything held over.
- A ladlefulFountain ladles ran about 1 to 1½ fluid ounces — two to three tablespoons over a single scoop in a footed glass.
The American soda fountain of the early twentieth century worked from formula books like this one, where the dispenser was expected to keep a rank of prepared syrups, crushed fruits and nut mixtures ready to ladle. Bananas reached American counters in quantity only after refrigerated steamship traffic from the Caribbean built up in the late nineteenth century, and they eventually became cheap enough to be mashed into fountain toppings rather than treated as a luxury. Pairing them with coconut and caramel and then tinting the whole thing pink says a good deal about the trade: the sundae was sold across a counter to be looked at as much as eaten, and it is reasonable to suppose that a dispenser who could make a beige mixture look festive sold more of it.