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Creme D'yvette
Two ounces crême d'yvette. Serve in 8-ounce glass one-third full of shaved ice. Garnish with crême de menthe cherries or crême de menthe pineapple. Straws.
A two-ingredient fountain pour that depends almost entirely on the liqueur itself, and on the ice being right.
- Crème YvetteA violet-and-berry liqueur, purple and floral, bottled at around 40 percent alcohol (about 80 proof). Jacquin's original was discontinued in the late 1960s and a version returned to the market in 2009; the two are said not to be identical. Crème de violette makes a reasonable stand-in, though it is more purely floral and less berry-sweet.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesTwo ounces is a generous double jigger, about 60 ml, and the 8-ounce glass is roughly 240 ml. Filled one-third with ice, the finished drink sits at about half the glass.
- Shaved ice, not cubesThe point of shaved or finely crushed ice is that the liqueur soaks into it and the whole thing is drunk as a slush through straws. Cubes will leave you with a shot of neat liqueur and a puddle. Pulse ice in a blender or crush it in a canvas bag if you have no shaver.
- Crème de menthe cherriesFountain supply houses sold cherries and pineapple chunks steeped in green crème de menthe, sweet and mint-bright against the violet. Drain maraschino cherries and let them sit overnight in green crème de menthe for the same effect.
- No soda is called forDespite the fountain setting, nothing here is carbonated. This is a liqueur frappé, meant to be sipped slowly through two straws rather than gulped.
- YieldOne glass. At two ounces of liqueur it is stronger than the ice and straws suggest.
American soda fountains before Prohibition were not always dry: many operated alongside or inside drug stores licensed to sell spirits, and fountain manuals of the period carry whole sections of liqueur frappés poured over shaved ice and drunk through straws, sitting a few pages away from the egg phosphates and ice cream sodas. Crème Yvette was a Philadelphia product of Charles Jacquin et Cie, and the name is traditionally said to honour the French cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert, though the attribution is repeated more often than it is documented. Its violet colour was its selling point at the fountain, where drinks were built to be looked at across a marble counter, and the mint-green cherry set against the purple is a colour choice as much as a flavour one. The liqueur vanished from the market for roughly forty years after the 1960s, which is why recipes like this one read as unmakeable to anyone who tried them in the interval.