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Dewdrop Sundae
Fill cocktail glass two-thirds full rich ice cream, fill glass with mint and sherry syrup. Top off with whipped cream and creme de menthe cherry. "Don't Care" Syrup. "Don't Care" is a fancy name, and any syrup will do. We sometimes advise a mixture of the most popular kinds. The following formula is said to be very fine: - Pineapple Syrup, 1 pint; Strawberry Syrup, 1 pint; American Extract of Vanilla, 1 ½ ounces; Port Wine, ½ pint; Simple Syrup, 1 gallon.
Two things sit on this page: an assembly for a single fountain sundae, and a bulk syrup formula meant for a working soda counter. The syrup makes well over a gallon, so scale it down before you start.
- The glassA fountain "cocktail glass" is a small footed glass, typically somewhere in the region of 5 to 6 ounces, closer to a modern sherbet or coupe than to a martini glass. On that size, two-thirds ice cream leaves roughly 1½ to 2 ounces of room for syrup.
- Sherry syrup and mint syrupMint syrup is simple syrup infused with fresh mint (sometimes tinted green); sherry syrup would have been simple syrup flavoured with a small measure of sherry, or possibly with a commercial sherry flavouring where alcohol was not sold. Either reading works here.
- Crème de menthe cherryA brined cherry steeped in green crème de menthe, standard fountain garnish. A green cocktail cherry is the nearest thing sold today.
- Rich ice creamIn fountain usage this means a high-butterfat vanilla rather than an ice or a cheap milk-based grade; no figure is given here. Modern premium vanilla is the right substitute.
- American Extract of VanillaEvidently a vanilla extract; "American" most likely marks it as a domestic rather than imported product, though that is an inference. Use ordinary pure vanilla extract, 1½ fluid ounces.
- Scaling the "Don't Care" syrupAs written it yields about 1⅓ gallons, roughly 170 drinks at an ounce apiece. Divide everything by sixteen for a manageable batch: 1 fluid ounce each pineapple and strawberry syrup, a generous ½ teaspoon vanilla, ½ fluid ounce port, 1 cup simple syrup.
- Keeping itWith fruit syrup and wine in it, this will not keep at room temperature as reliably as a plain heavy simple syrup. Refrigerate and use within a couple of weeks.
- Note on the pairingThe "Don't Care" formula is a separate item that happens to share the page. It is not the syrup called for in the Dewdrop, which wants mint and sherry.
Soda fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried hundreds of these short assemblies, most of them named rather than invented: a dispenser could sell the same ice cream, syrup and whipped cream a dozen ways by changing the label on the menu board. "Dewdrop" belongs to the green-and-white family of mint drinks, and its trick is visual as much as gustatory, the pale cream and green cherry sitting above the syrup. Small quantities of wine and cordial were entirely ordinary at the fountain in this period, used as flavourings by the half-pint in gallon batches rather than as drink in themselves; Prohibition later pushed dispensers toward alcohol-free "wine flavors" that imitated port and sherry. The candid note attached to the "Don't Care" syrup, that any syrup will do and a mixture of the popular kinds is as good as anything, is a fair picture of how much of this trade actually worked.