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Cream Cherries
Fill sherbet glass almost full of finely chopped ice, add a ladleful of American Whole Cherries. Top with spoonful of whipped cream, and serve with sherbet spoon. "Cream City."
Serve in 12-ounce glass. Use shaker half full of cracked ice; add 1 ounce chocolate syrup, 1 ounce strawberry syrup, 2 ounces plain cream, 1 tablespoonful ice cream; shake, and transfer to glass without straining. Fill with carbonated water. Serve with straws with carbonated water. Serve with straws.
Two fountain items run together in the original setting: a spooned cherry sundae and, from "Cream City" onward, a shaken chocolate-strawberry cream soda. The last sentence is a compositor's stutter and can be ignored.
- American Whole CherriesAlmost certainly a commercial fountain pack rather than fresh fruit: whole cherries in heavy syrup. A drained jar of them with a few spoons of their syrup gives much the same effect.
- A ladlefulFountain ladles were small, on the order of an ounce or so, so figure roughly two to three tablespoons of fruit with syrup. A "spoonful" of whipped cream here reads as a rounded soda spoon rather than a level measure.
- Finely chopped iceIce broken fine, not cubes. A blender pulse or a bag and a mallet will do it; coarse ice leaves the syrup pooled at the bottom and the glass half empty.
- Plain creamFountain "plain cream" was ordinary sweet cream, closest to modern light or coffee cream. Half-and-half works; heavy cream shaken with syrup and ice thickens into something closer to a milkshake.
- Shake without strainingThe ice fragments are meant to go into the glass. They keep the soda cold and give it body, since only 2 ounces of cream are carrying a 12-ounce drink.
- Carbonated waterAdd it last and pour down the side against the spoon. A siphon or a fresh bottle of seltzer is essential; flat water leaves a syrup-and-cream sludge with no lift.
- Sherbet glassA footed bowl of about 5 to 6 ounces. Any small stemmed dessert glass serves, and the sundae is a single portion, as is the 12-ounce soda.
Both items come out of the American drugstore soda fountain at its commercial height, when syrups and fruit packs arrived from suppliers, fountains whipped their own cream, and the dispenser's job was assembly to a house formula measured in ounces and ladlefuls. The fruit is named as a branded product line rather than an ingredient, which may reflect a tendency in fountain manuals of the period: recipes doubled as advertising for the jobber's catalogue. "Cream City" is the long-standing nickname for Milwaukee, from the pale cream-colored brick made there in the nineteenth century, though fountain drinks were routinely given city and college names for local appeal, so the connection here may be nothing more than a pun on the cream in the glass.