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Decoration Sundae
Serve ice cream in the shape of an egg on a dish. Pour over the cream crême de menthe syrup. Around the ice cream lay ½ dozen crême de menthe cherries and a spray of menthe.
A fountain assembly rather than a cooked dish: the whole effect rests on shaping and on the green of the mint. Everything can be staged in advance except the ice cream itself.
- The egg shape is the pointTwo warmed tablespoons passed back and forth give the smooth ovoid the name depends on; a No. 16 disher plus a quick pass with a spoon works as well. Work with ice cream tempered a few minutes out of the freezer, then refreeze the shaped eggs hard on a chilled tray before serving, or the syrup will slide them off the dish.
- Crème de menthe syrup is not the liqueurIn fountain usage this means a non-alcoholic mint flavoring syrup, colored green — the soda dispenser's counterpart to the bar bottle. Any green mint syrup sold for coffee or cocktails will do; if you substitute the liqueur, it is thin and will pool rather than coat. Allow about 2 tablespoons per serving.
- Crème de menthe cherriesMaraschino-style cherries steeped and tinted in mint syrup, a fountain garnish of the period and now sold as green cocktail cherries. Drain them well, since the packing syrup will muddy the pool of green on the dish.
- Half a dozen is deliberateHalf a dozen -- The recipe calls for six cherries around one egg of ice cream. Space them evenly at the base rather than piling them.
- A spray of mentheA sprig of fresh mint, laid on rather than chopped; rinse and dry it so the leaves stay glossy.
- Chill the dishA stemmed glass sundae dish or shallow coupe straight from the freezer buys several minutes.
- YieldOne serving as written. Scale by the egg.
The name may point to Decoration Day, the late-May observance of graves with flowers and greenery that became Memorial Day — a green-on-white sundae with a spray of foliage would be exactly the sort of seasonal novelty fountain men were expected to invent for a date on the calendar — though it may just as easily mean nothing more than that the sundae was a decorated one. Soda fountain manuals of this kind were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the counter rather than the home cook, and they are full of formulas whose whole reason for existing is a holiday, a local event, or a college color scheme. The crème de menthe flavor itself reached American fountains through the alcohol-free flavoring syrup trade, which mirrored the bar's repertoire closely enough that a customer could order the taste of a cordial without the cordial — a habit that served fountains very well once Prohibition arrived.