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Creme de Menthe Cocktail
Two ounces crême de menthe syrup, 1½ glass shaved ice. Serve in 8-ounce mineral glass, topping off with sundae cherry or sundae pineapple.
A fountain "cocktail" of this sort contains no spirits — it is flavoring syrup poured over ice and eaten with a spoon as much as drunk. The whole thing works or fails on the ice.
- Crème de menthe syrup, not liqueurThis is the alcohol-free fountain syrup: sugar syrup flavored with peppermint oil and tinted green. Substituting the liqueur gives you a different drink entirely; if you are building from scratch, a heavy peppermint simple syrup is the intended thing.
- Two ounces is a quarter cupA lot of syrup for an 8-ounce glass; presumably the melting ice thins it as you go, though the recipe does not say so.
- "1½ glass shaved ice" is ambiguousThe recipe does not say which glass is meant. If it is the same 8-ounce mineral glass, that is about 12 ounces of loose shaved ice going into an 8-ounce glass, so the ice must mound above the rim.
- Shaved, not cubed or crushedShaved ice is fine and fluffy, so it packs, holds the syrup in suspension and does not sink into a sludge at the bottom. Cubes leave you with syrup at the base and clear water on top.
- The mineral glassAn 8-ounce glass of the sort used for mineral waters; the exact form varied. Any 8-ounce glass works, and a wider bowl makes the mounded ice easier to build.
- Sundae cherry and sundae pineappleFountain stock items: cherries in heavy syrup (what a modern kitchen calls maraschino) and small pieces or chunks of pineapple packed in syrup. Drain them or the extra liquid dilutes the top.
- Yield and servingOne glass, one person, served at once; the recipe specifies no utensils. It cannot usefully be made ahead, since shaved ice does not hold.
The American Soda Book belongs to the great age of the drugstore fountain, when a soda dispenser was expected to keep dozens of flavoring syrups on hand and turn out drinks with the vocabulary and flourish of a bartender. Calling this a "cocktail" is part of that borrowing: fountain menus of the period freely used bar language — cocktails, fizzes, frappés, highballs — for wholly temperance drinks. Crème de menthe was a natural fit among the fountain syrups, its green color and cold peppermint bite reading as sophisticated at a glance. The habit of finishing a drink with a sundae cherry or a spoonful of syruped pineapple shows how little separated the fountain's drinks from its ice creams; the same jars served both.