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Cream (Dilute the contents of a can) (II)
Dilute the contents of a can of American Evaporated Cream, with 5 ounces of water, and serve from a silver-plated cream pitcher. This cream cannot be whipped.
A fountain man's working note rather than a dish: canned evaporated cream cut back to pouring strength for coffee, sodas and floats. Two things need translating — the can size and what "cream" meant on a label in this period.
- What the can heldEarly evaporated cream and milk was sold in small tall cans of roughly 6 fluid ounces as well as larger tins of around 14 to 15 ounces. Five ounces of water to the can suggests the small size, giving a near 1:1 dilution; scale the water to whatever tin you actually open.
- Evaporated, not condensedEvaporated cream is unsweetened, sterilized in the can and reduced by about half. Sweetened condensed milk is not a substitute here — it would sugar every cup of coffee it touched.
- "Cream" on the labelPeriod canned "cream" was often what we would now call evaporated milk, or a light cream at best. Modern evaporated milk is the direct descendant; supermarket heavy cream is a different product entirely.
- Why it will not whipThe line is not a warning so much as a fact of fat content. Whipping needs roughly 30 percent butterfat to build a stable foam, and diluted evaporated cream is far below that.
- Refrigeration after openingThe sealed can keeps at room temperature, which is exactly why fountains used it. Once opened and watered it is perishable milk: cover, chill, and use within a couple of days.
- The silver pitcherSilver plate was common service ware at the fountain. Any non-reactive pitcher does the same job; the point of the instruction is that the diluted cream goes out looking like dairy cream, not out of a tin.
- YieldA small can plus its water gives about 11 ounces — enough to serve perhaps a dozen coffees or a few sodas.
Canned milk was one of the technologies that made the American soda fountain possible. Sweetened condensed milk was commercialized by Gail Borden in the 1850s and unsweetened evaporated milk followed later in the century, generally credited to John B. Meyenberg's work on sterilizing milk in sealed cans. For a druggist running a fountain before mechanical refrigeration was common, fresh cream was a daily liability — it soured, it had to be bought in small lots, and it could not be held through a slow afternoon. A case of sealed tins solved all of that, and the whole of this instruction is really about presentation: dilute it back to the consistency of cream, get it out of the tin and into plated silver, and the customer sees dairy. The closing sentence is the tradeoff stated honestly.