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Cold Ripe Persimmon
A Prize Formula.
Acid Benzoic, 1 scruple; Chocolate, ½ ounce; Sugar, 1 lb. Mix and put in gallon bottle.
Evaporated Apricots, 1 lb.; Water, ½ gallon; Sugar, 5 ounces; Rose Water, 2 ounces. Carmine color sufficient to make bright persimmon color. Boil the apricots in water until the fruit swells and softens. Use in a covered porcelain kettle. a. Pour off the hot water into the gallon bottle, and shake until chocolate is dissolved. b. Mix 5 pounds of sugar with the apricots, melt and strain by expression, washing residue with a little hot water before throwing away. Mix a and b. When cool, add the rose water and coloring. Serve in tall glasses with plenty of foam, -cream, when desired. Beginners are advised to stick close to the popular and well established flavors-Vanilla, Chocolate, Lemon, Strawberry, Pineapple, Raspberry, Orange and Sarsaparilla.
This is a soda fountain syrup formula, not a drink recipe: the finished gallon is a concentrate to be drawn off an ounce or two at a time and topped with carbonated water. The text is also internally contradictory about sugar, so read it through before starting.
- The sugar discrepancyThe ingredient list calls for 1 lb of sugar in the bottle and 5 ounces with the apricots, but the method then says to mix "5 pounds of sugar with the apricots." One of these is likely a printer's error and there is no way to tell which. Fountain syrups of this period were generally heavily sweetened, which may argue for the larger figure, but the original is genuinely ambiguous.
- A scrupleAn apothecaries' scruple is 20 grains, about 1.3 grams. Spread through a gallon of syrup that is roughly 340 mg per litre of benzoic acid, used here as a preservative to keep an open fountain bottle from fermenting.
- Benzoic acidStill in use as sodium benzoate. If you reproduce this, only food-grade material belongs in it; laboratory reagent benzoic acid is not sold to food purity standards. The acid dissolves poorly in cold water, which is why it goes into the bottle to meet the hot apricot liquor.
- Evaporated apricotsPlain dried apricots; "evaporated" denotes fruit dried by artificial heat rather than in the sun. Modern fruit may give a somewhat different, milder result.
- Porcelain kettleAn enamelled or otherwise non-reactive pan. It matters because the acid, the fruit and the carmine will all pick up metallic flavours and colour shifts from bare iron or aluminium.
- Strain by expressionPress the sweetened apricot pulp through a jelly bag or fine sieve rather than letting it drip, then rinse the spent pulp with a little hot water to recover the syrup clinging to it. The point is yield, not clarity.
- Rose water and colour lastBoth go in only after the syrup has cooled. Rose water's aroma is volatile and boils away, and carmine, a cochineal lake, will darken and dull in a hot acidic syrup.
- CarmineCochineal extract, made from scale insects. It is still a permitted colour but must be declared by name on labels in several jurisdictions and is not vegetarian; a modern red colouring is the simpler substitution.
- ServingAbout a gallon of syrup, which at 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces a glass makes roughly 85 to 128 drinks. Draw the syrup into a tall glass, hit it with carbonated water hard enough to raise a head, and add a spoon of cream if wanted.
There is no persimmon in this persimmon soda, and that is the whole point of it. Fountain trade papers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ran regular prize-formula competitions, and the winning entries were often imitations: a familiar fruit name built out of cheaper, more shelf-stable materials, here dried apricots for body and acidity, chocolate for the muddy brown-orange depth, rose water for perfume, and carmine to bring the colour up to what the customer expected from a ripe persimmon. The preservative is a marker of date as much as anything. Benzoic acid and its salts were the standard defence against fermentation in open syrup bottles, and their use in soft drinks became one of the most publicly fought questions of the early Pure Food era, with Harvey Wiley's Bureau of Chemistry opposing benzoate and a referee board convened under Ira Remsen eventually finding it acceptable in small amounts. The closing sentence is the honest one: whoever compiled the book knew that a beginner behind the counter would sell far more vanilla, lemon and sarsaparilla than novelties like this.