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Creme de Menthe Sundae
Serve a ladle of crême de menthe syrup over strawberry ice cream, adding a sprig of mint.
A two-line fountain formula that assumes a soda clerk's equipment and a shelf of house syrups. The only real decision is what "crême de menthe" means here.
- The syrup is not the liqueurAt a soda fountain, crème de menthe syrup was a non-alcoholic green mint syrup, essentially a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with peppermint or spearmint oil and coloured green. Substituting the bottled liqueur gives you a boozy, much thinner sauce that will run straight off the ice cream.
- A ladleFountain syrup ladles commonly held somewhere around 1 to 1 1/2 fluid ounces, so about 2 to 3 tablespoons; the recipe itself gives no quantity. Err on the low side over a single scoop, or the mint overwhelms the fruit.
- Making the syrupIf you are mixing your own, fountain syrups were heavy -- something in the region of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water, cooked just until clear -- then flavoured with peppermint extract to taste once cool. Heat drives off the volatile mint oil, so flavour off the fire.
- Strawberry, not vanillaMint against strawberry works because the acid in the fruit cuts the sugar in the syrup; with vanilla the whole thing tends to read as one flat sweet note.
- The mint sprigSlap the sprig once between your palms before setting it in place. It bruises the leaf just enough to release oil, and the aroma is doing most of the work of tying the garnish to the syrup.
- Vessel and yieldOne serving, built in a footed sundae glass or a shallow tulip dish. Chill the glass first; ice cream sliding in a warm dish is what turns a sundae into soup.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the clerk behind the marble counter rather than the home cook, which is why the instruction is a single sentence with no quantities: the reader was expected to know what a ladle held and to have the syrups already drawn up in their pumps. Crème de menthe borrowed its name and its green colour from the French liqueur, but American fountains sold a temperance version by the gallon, and mint syrups were a fountain staple through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, dispensed in phosphates, sodas and sundaes alike. The sundae itself is generally traced to the 1880s or 1890s in the American Midwest, with several towns claiming its invention and none of the claims fully documented; the name is often said to come from Sunday sales of ice cream dressed with syrup rather than soda water. What the recipe really records is a house style: a fountain's reputation rested on the range of its syrups, and combinations like mint over strawberry were the cheap, fast way to multiply a short list of ice creams into a long menu.