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College Ice
Also known as Fruited Cream and "Sundae."
Into a flare champagne glass turn a cone-shaped measure of ice cream. Over this pour a half ounce of crushed fruit from bowl on counter, any flavor called for by the customer, who eats the cream, mixing it with the fruit as he proceeds, with delicious results. American Cream Chocolate Syrup over ice cream is also a favorite. This enables you to serve any flavor ice cream called for at your fountain, and only carry one kind in stock, preferably vanilla.
This is a fountain assembly rather than a cooked dish, so the whole recipe turns on proportion and on what "crushed fruit" meant behind the counter.
- Crushed fruit is not fresh fruitThe bowl on the counter held fruit crushed and held in heavy sugar syrup — the ancestor of a commercial sundae topping. Fresh crushed berries with no sugar will taste thin and will water down the ice cream as they melt it; macerate the fruit with sugar first, or use a thick preserve loosened with a spoonful of syrup.
- A half ounce is about a tablespoonThat is a restrained pour by modern habit. The instruction that the customer mixes as he eats depends on it: too much syrup and the ice cream simply drowns.
- The cone-shaped measureA conical fountain dipper. The recipe specifies a single measure turned into the glass.
- Flare champagne glassA stemmed glass with an outward-flaring bowl, not a flute. A modern coupe, a small footed dessert dish or a stemmed sherbet glass gives the same effect; a tall flute will not let a spoon reach the bottom.
- American Cream Chocolate SyrupMost likely a proprietary syrup of the period rather than a formula. Any thick chocolate fountain syrup stands in; the recipe offers it as an alternative pour alongside the crushed fruits.
- The commercial logicThe closing line is the real instruction: carry vanilla only and let the topping supply the flavor. It still holds at home — a good vanilla plus three or four syrups covers more ground than three or four tubs of ice cream.
- YieldOne glass per person, as written.
"College ice" was one of several fountain names for what became the sundae. The origin of "sundae" itself is traditional rather than documented: it is usually traced to towns that restricted the sale of carbonated sodas on Sundays, leaving dispensers to serve ice cream with syrup and no soda water, with the spelling altered to avoid offense. Claims are made for Two Rivers and for Evanston among others, and none is settled. What this entry does document is the economics of the fountain ebox, a row of open bowls of crushed fruit, and a deliberate strategy of stocking vanilla alone and selling variety out of the syrup pumps.