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Cranberry Phosphate Syrup
Take i quart cranberries and 1 quart water, boil gently for half an . Add the clear hour; then strain through fine sieve, getting 1 pint of juice. Add the clear juice to 1 gallon of plain syrup and 2 ounces of American Fruit Acid and ½ ounce American Soda Foam. Add acid phosphate when
A soda fountain syrup, written for a dispenser working in gallons and relying on trade preparations sold by the drug supply houses. The text is garbled in two places and the final line breaks off mid-sentence, so the acid phosphate quantity is missing entirely.
- The broken instruction"Add acid phosphate when" is where the original page ends, and no quantity survives. Any amount you use is your own reconstruction, not the book's instruction.
- The duplicated phrase"boil gently for half an . Add the clear hour" is a typesetting error. Read it as: boil gently for half an hour, strain, then add the clear juice.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" was generally heavier than a standard bar syrup today, though the proportions varied from house to house, and it was cooked only enough to dissolve the sugar. A gallon of it is the base for the whole batch.
- American Fruit AcidA proprietary acid solution; trade preparations of this kind were generally citric or a citric-tartaric blend in water, though the maker's formula is not recorded. Nothing sold under that name exists now; a food-grade citric acid solution stands in, though 2 ounces of an unknown concentration is not a convertible figure.
- American Soda FoamAnother trade product: a foaming agent, typically built on quillaia (soap bark) extract or gum, added so the drawn soda would hold a head. Modern equivalents are sold as foamers or head retainers for soda work.
- Acid phosphateDilute phosphoric acid with mineral salts, the defining sour note of a fountain phosphate. It is still manufactured for cocktail and soda use. It is not the same thing as the fruit acid and does not substitute for it; the phosphate gives a dry mineral tang rather than a bright citric one.
- Juice yieldA quart of cranberries with a quart of water, simmered and strained, will not reliably give a full pint of clear juice unless the berries are crushed as they soften. Press the pulp gently and strain a second time if the first run is cloudy.
- Yield and servingThis makes a little over a gallon of syrup, enough for something on the order of 100 to 145 drinks at the usual fountain measure of 1 to 1½ ounces of syrup in a glass filled with carbonated water.
Phosphates were the workhorse of the American soda fountain from the 1880s through the 1920s: acid phosphate, sold by the gallon to druggists, gave a sourness that citric acid alone could not, and its faintly saline mineral finish made sweet fruit syrups drinkable in quantity. Cranberry had the advantage that its deep red juice needed no added coloring in a trade that colored nearly everything. Books like this one were written for the dispenser rather than the home cook, which is why the ingredient list mixes kitchen work with branded compounds ordered from a supply catalog; "American Fruit Acid" and "American Soda Foam" were trade goods whose exact formulas were the manufacturer's business and are now largely lost.