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Creme de Chocolate
Two fluid ounces chocolate syrup, 1 ounce shaved ice, fill with charged whipped cream. Half fill another glass with cream, and mix by pouring.
A fountain drink written in the shorthand a dispenser used behind the counter, where the syrup pump and the cream tap did most of the measuring. Reconstructing it at home is mostly a matter of translating the equipment.
- Two fluid ounces of syrupThat is a quarter cup, a generous fountain measure. Fountain chocolate syrup was typically cocoa, sugar and water, thick and only moderately sweet; modern squeeze-bottle sundae syrup is sweeter and thinner, so start with less and taste.
- An ounce of shaved iceRoughly two tablespoons of finely shaved, not cubed, ice. Its job is to chill and slightly dilute, not to fill the glass, and coarse ice will refuse to blend when the drink is poured back and forth.
- "Charged whipped cream"Not aerosol dessert topping. Fountains generally kept fresh cream in a pressurised dispenser that gassed and foamed it on the way out. A nitrous cream whipper loaded with unsweetened cream and given one charge, dispensed loosely, is the nearest household equivalent.
- The second glass of creamPlain liquid cream, half a glass of it. A lighter cream or half-and-half will probably suit the drink better than modern heavy whipping cream, which can make it cloying.
- Mix by pouringThe hinge of the recipe. Pour the contents from one glass to the other to fold the gassed cream into the syrup without a spoon. Stirring collapses the foam and you lose the texture the drink exists for.
- Glass and yieldOne serving; the glass size is not specified, but it must be large enough to take 3 ounces plus a fill of cream. Serve immediately, as the foam will break and the drink separate into syrup and cream.
"Creme" drinks were a distinct category on fountain menus of the early twentieth century, sitting between the plain soda, which was syrup and carbonated water, and the ice cream soda. What set them apart was cream dispensed under gas pressure from a tap alongside the carbonated water, which gave a light, foamy body without ice cream and without the melting problem that came with it. Chocolate was the workhorse flavour of the American fountain, and drugstore counters kept chocolate syrup on hand. The technique of mixing by pouring between two glasses aerated a drink and let the customer watch the dispenser work.