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Defender
Ginger syrup, 4 drams; lemon syrup, 4 drams; lemon juice, 1 dram aromatic tincture, 20 drops. Carbonated water, coarse stream, enough to fill two-thirds of a 12-ounce glass. Add a teaspoonful of powdered sugar and stir with a spoon. "Quality rather than variety will make the reputation of the soda department of your business."
A single-glass fountain drink written in apothecary measure, since the man behind the counter was usually a pharmacist working from graduates and drop bottles. Everything here converts cleanly except the tincture.
- Drams to spoonsA fluid dram is 1/8 fluid ounce, about 3.7 ml. So 4 drams of ginger syrup and 4 of lemon syrup are each about a tablespoon, and 1 dram of lemon juice is a scant teaspoon. Twenty drops is roughly 1 ml, or a generous 1/4 teaspoon.
- Aromatic tinctureTinctura aromatica was a standard pharmacy preparation: cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, galangal and similar spices macerated in strong alcohol. It is no longer stocked; a spiced or cinnamon bitters, used at the same 20-drop scale, gives the closest effect.
- Coarse streamFountain apparatus had two draws. The coarse (or heavy) stream delivered water fast and with little agitation, for filling; the fine stream was a thin spray used to whip up foam. Here you want the drink filled quietly, not frothed.
- Sugar last, and whySugar last -- the powdered sugar goes in after the carbonated water. Dry sugar dropped into charged water will throw up a head of foam, which may be why it is stirred in at the end rather than dissolved into the syrup, though the recipe does not say.
- Glass and fillTwo-thirds of a 12-ounce glass is about 8 ounces, taken here as water over roughly an ounce of syrup. That leaves a third of the glass empty, presumably room for foam; the recipe does not say to top it up.
- SweetnessTwo commercial fountain syrups plus a teaspoon of sugar is sweet by current taste. The lemon juice is the only thing pulling against it, and an extra squeeze does no harm.
- YieldOne 12-ounce glass, served immediately. Charged water goes flat within minutes, so this is not a drink to batch.
The American Soda Book belongs to the trade literature of the drugstore fountain, when soda water was still dispensed by druggists who measured in drams and minims and kept their flavoring tinctures on the same shelves as their medicines. Fountain drinks were routinely named for whatever was in the newspapers, and a patriotic-sounding Defender fits a period when yachts, warships and prizefighters all carried names of that stamp; the connection is suggestive rather than documented. The formula itself is a ginger-and-lemon base sharpened with a spice tincture. It closes with a motto about quality rather than variety, aimed at proprietors tempted to advertise a hundred flavors they could not make well.