Home › At the Fountain › Cream Cordial
Cream Cordial
One-half ounce rose syrup, ½ ounce pineapple syrup, ½ ounce vanilla syrup, ½ ounce orange syrup, 1 ounce plain cream, ¼ glass shaved ice. ounce plain cream, 4 glass shaved ice. Shake, strain, toss and serve Shake, strain, toss and serve.
A soda-fountain mixed drink built entirely from flavoring syrups and cream, shaken cold and served without carbonation. The measures are fluid ounces poured from fountain syrup pumps, and the whole thing comes to roughly a half-cup of liquid before ice.
- Total volume and yieldTwo ounces of syrup plus one ounce of cream makes a single small glass, about 3 oz before dilution and closer to 4 oz once the shaved ice melts in. This is one serving, sipped, not a tall drink.
- Fountain syrupsThese were heavy sweet syrups, considerably sugar-denser than what is sold today. Modern coffee-bar syrups are thinner and less sweet, so the drink will taste weaker and thinner if you substitute them.
- Rose syrupThe one flavor with no supermarket equivalent. Middle Eastern and South Asian groceries sell rose syrup (often labeled sharbat or gulab); it is potent, and a half ounce is enough to carry the whole glass. Rose water is not a substitute at that volume.
- "Plain cream"At the fountain this meant sweet, unflavored dairy cream, generally what we would call light cream or half-and-half rather than heavy whipping cream. Heavy cream will make the drink cloying and thick in the shaker.
- Shaved ice, not cubesA quarter glass of shaved ice chills fast and dilutes fast, which is the point of the style. Cubes shaken the same length of time leave the drink warm and oversweet; crush the ice or shake noticeably longer.
- "Toss"Most likely an instruction to aerate the strained drink by pouring it between two vessels, though the exact fountain sense of the word is uncertain. Serve immediately.
- CurdlingAcidic fruit syrups can break cream if the mix stands. Shake and serve at once rather than batching ahead.
Drinks like this belong to the era when the drugstore soda fountain was a full bar in everything but alcohol, and the dispenser was expected to improvise from a rack of flavoring syrups. The name cordial echoes the liquor trade, where it meant a sweetened, flavored spirit. The four-syrup blend of rose, pineapple, vanilla and orange reflects a taste for compound floral-fruit flavors, rose being a familiar American flavoring into the early twentieth century before it receded to the perfume counter and the imported-goods aisle.