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Delmonico Frappe
One ounce orange syrup, 1 ounce sherry syrup, 1 dash angostura bitters. Serve as any frappe.
A two-syrup fountain drink built on shaved ice, with bitters for backbone. The whole thing depends on the ice, which the original assumes you already understand.
- What a frappé is hereAt a soda fountain, "serve as any frappe" means packing a glass with finely shaved or crushed ice, pouring the syrups over, and churning with a spoon until the outside of the glass frosts. It is drunk with a straw, not spooned like a sorbet.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesOne ounce is two tablespoons, so the drink is a quarter-cup of syrup total over ice. Scale up by counting ounces, not by eye.
- Sherry syrupFountain "sherry syrup" was often a flavoring compound imitating sherry rather than fortified wine. A dry oloroso cut with simple syrup gives a closer flavor if you want the real thing; a splash of amontillado plus plain syrup works as a substitute.
- Orange syrupPeriod orange syrup was sugar syrup flavored with oil of orange or orange juice and peel. Equal parts fresh orange juice and sugar, gently dissolved, is a fair stand-in.
- The dash of bittersA dash from a bitters bottle is a short shake, very roughly an eighth of a teaspoon. It is the only bitter element against two sweet syrups, so leaving it out flattens the drink.
- Ice texture mattersCubed ice will not do the job. Frappé ice should be fine enough to take up the syrup and thicken, which is what separates this from a plain syrup-and-soda.
- YieldOne drink, as written. The built drink will not hold once the ice starts going, so mix each glass to order.
Soda fountain manuals of the early twentieth century borrowed freely from the bar, and this is a clear case: Delmonico's, the New York restaurant that set the standard for American fine dining from the mid-1800s onward, lent its name to steaks, potatoes, puddings and a long list of mixed drinks it may never have served. The sherry syrup is the tell. When temperance sentiment and later Prohibition pushed alcohol out of public drinking, fountain suppliers answered with flavoring syrups imitating sherry, port, claret and rum, so that a druggist could put a respectable version of a bar drink in front of a customer. Angostura bitters, generally traced to Siegert in 1824 and sold as a digestive tonic as much as a cocktail ingredient, sat comfortably in a pharmacy and made the imitation convincing.