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Crushed Violets
Draw 2 ounces violet syrup in a soda glass, add ice cream and fill with fine and coarse stream soda. Sprinkle on top of foam a few candied violet leaves.
A fountain drink written for someone standing at a marble counter with a two-stream carbonator, so the mechanics need translating more than the ingredients do.
- "Draw" and the soda glassTo draw is simply to dispense from the syrup pump; pumps were made to deliver a measured shot, often about an ounce, though sizes varied. Soda glasses of the period ran roughly 8 to 12 ounces, so 2 ounces of syrup plus a scoop of ice cream leaves only a few ounces of room for carbonated water and foam.
- Fine and coarse streamFountain taps offered a fine, aerated spray and a heavier coarse jet, and a drink like this used both: one to mix the syrup and ice cream, the other to build or finish the foam. Manuals of the period do not agree on which came first. With a home siphon or a bottle of seltzer, pour a splash briskly from height onto the syrup, stir, then top up gently down the side.
- Ice creamUnspecified; vanilla was the usual fountain standby and is the safe assumption. One No. 16 scoop, about 2 ounces, is right for this size glass; more turns it into a float rather than a soda.
- Violet syrupMade from sweet violet (Viola odorata) flowers, sugar and water, and often reinforced with orris root and colouring. Commercial violet syrups sold today are usually flavoured with the same floral-ionone notes; sirop de violette from a French producer is the closest match. African violet is an unrelated plant and is not used.
- "Candied violet leaves"The garnish trade sold both crystallised violet blossoms and candied leaves, so take the instruction at face value. Candied violets are the easier thing to buy; you can also crystallise fresh Viola odorata petals or leaves yourself with egg white and superfine sugar.
- A light hand with the syrupIonone-type violet flavour reads as soapy above a certain concentration. Two ounces in a full-size glass is already assertive; if your syrup is a modern concentrate rather than a fountain syrup, start at half that and taste.
- YieldOne glass, served at once. It has to be drunk while the foam is standing.
Violet was one of the great floral flavours of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, running alongside rose, orange flower and orgeat through confectionery, liqueurs and pharmacy syrups before it drifted out of Anglo-American taste. The American soda fountain grew out of the drugstore, where the dispenser already had a shelf of flavouring syrups on hand, and books like this one were written to give him a repertoire of named drinks to chalk on the board. Crystallised violets, associated particularly with Toulouse and with English confectioners, were a ready-made luxury garnish that signalled the dish was a treat rather than a nickel refresher. The recipe's brevity is characteristic: these were trade manuals for men who already knew the equipment, and the whole art lay in the syrup-to-soda proportion and in building the foam.