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Flinch Frappe
Strawberry syrup, ¾ ounce; pineapple syrup, ¾ ounce; sweet cream, I ounce; angostura bitters, 1 dash. Small quantity of ice cream, shake well, put in 12-ounce glass, add a little soda, small stream, and ice cream to fill up glass. Garnish with pineapple and cherry.
A fountain frappe is a thick shaken drink, closer to a light milkshake than a soda, finished at the tap and topped with more ice cream. Everything here is doable at home with a cocktail shaker and a soda siphon or a bottle of seltzer.
- The measures are fluid ouncesThree-quarters of an ounce is one and a half tablespoons; one ounce is two tablespoons. The whole flavoring base comes to about 2½ fl oz before ice cream.
- Fountain syrups are heavyCommercial fountain syrups of the period were considerably denser than modern coffee-bar syrups, in the region of two parts sugar to one of water with fruit juice or essence, though formulas varied. A homemade heavy sugar syrup infused with crushed fruit is closer to the mark.
- Sweet cream means plain creamIn fountain usage "sweet" simply distinguishes it from soured or cultured cream. Use heavy or light cream, unwhipped and unsweetened.
- Shake without iceShake without added ice -- The recipe calls for no ice beyond the "small quantity of ice cream," which does the chilling; a small scoop is about right. Some fountain frappes were shaken with shaved ice, but adding cubed ice to this one would only water it down.
- A little soda, small streamFountain draft arms had a coarse and a fine stream; the fine stream was used to build foam without breaking the mixture. Pour two or three ounces of well-chilled seltzer slowly down the side of the glass, then spoon in ice cream to the rim.
- The dash of bitters is structuralOne dash of Angostura against that much syrup is what keeps the drink from reading as candy. It is easy to overshoot — a dash is a quick single shake from the bottle, not a teaspoon.
- Glass and yieldOne 12-ounce glass, one serving. A standard 16-ounce American pint glass will leave the drink looking short; use a soda glass or tall tumbler of about 12 ounces.
Frappes were one of the standard categories a dispenser was expected to know, alongside the plain soda, the ice cream soda, the egg drink and the phosphate — a shaken, semi-frozen drink built on syrup, cream and a little ice cream, then lengthened with carbonated water. Fountain formulas were routinely named after whatever was in the air: songs, ball clubs, college yells, popular card games. Flinch was one such American card game, and it may be the source of the drink's name, though the connection is speculative; names of this kind in fountain manuals of the era usually bear no relation to the contents. The dash of Angostura is worth noting: aromatic bitters began as a digestive medicine, and the American soda fountain grew directly out of the drugstore, so a bitters bottle sat within arm's reach of the syrup rail and turned up in otherwise purely sweet formulas.