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Coffee Shake
One-half glass shaved ice, ½ ounce fresh cream, ½ ounces coffee syrup, 1 dash extract of vanilla, ¾ tumblerful plain milk. Shake well, strain and add plain soda in a fine stream. Coffee Shake (Philadelphia).
Serve in a 12-ounce glass. Fill glass half full of fine shaved ice, ½ ounce of pure sweet cream, 1 ounce of coffee syrup, ½ ounce vanilla syrup, fill glass ¾ full of milk, shake and strain, add sufficient soda to fill glass and pour from shaker to glass.
Two versions of the same drink sit side by side here: a shorthand formula and the fuller Philadelphia service. Both are soda-fountain drinks, which means the finished glass is milk and coffee syrup lengthened with carbonated water, not a milkshake in the later sense.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesFountain measures are volume throughout: 1 oz coffee syrup is 2 tablespoons, ½ oz cream is 1 tablespoon. The first formula's "½ ounces coffee syrup" reads oddly, and the plural suggests a figure may have dropped out in setting, so the Philadelphia version's 1 ounce is the safer number to work from.
- Plain sodaThis is unflavoured carbonated water from the fountain, delivered under pressure. Chilled seltzer or club soda from a siphon or a fresh bottle is the equivalent; flat water will leave the drink dull and heavy.
- Coffee syrupA sweetened coffee concentrate, not brewed coffee. It survives commercially in Rhode Island, where it is a supermarket staple, and can be approximated by simmering strong coffee with an equal weight of sugar until it thickens slightly.
- Extract versus syrupThe first formula calls for a dash of vanilla extract, the Philadelphia one for ½ oz vanilla syrup. They are not interchangeable in quantity: a dash of extract is a few drops, while the syrup contributes noticeable sweetness and volume.
- Shaved iceFountain shaved ice was fine and snowy, meant to chill and dilute quickly during shaking, then be left behind in the strainer. Cracked cubes will work but chill less efficiently; do not substitute crushed ice and skip the straining.
- The fine streamThe soda goes in last, slowly, against the side of the glass or into the drink in a thin stream. Poured fast it foams over the top and the glass ends up half air.
- YieldOne 12-ounce glass in the Philadelphia version; the first formula is given in tumblerfuls and states no glass size. The instruction to pour from shaker to glass at the end is for mixing, not for aeration in a blender sense.
Soda fountains were pharmacy fixtures in America from the mid-nineteenth century, and by the time manuals like this one appeared the dispenser was expected to work from a standing library of flavouring syrups kept in graduated bottles at the counter. Coffee syrup was one of the standard stocks, alongside vanilla, chocolate and the fruit acids, and it let a druggist serve a cold coffee drink without brewing anything. The parenthetical "(Philadelphia)" is often taken to mark a regional service style, the same drink being assembled differently from city to city. The word "shake" here still means literally shaken by hand in a tin, rather than the later motorised drink mixer and the thick ice-cream milkshake that came with it.