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French Orange Sherbet Syrup, 4
Vanilla syrup, 2¼ pints; pineapple syrup, 21/ ½ pints; orange syrup, 2½ pints; sherry wine, 1½ pint; grape juice, ¼ pint. Mix and strain.
This is a compounding formula, not a drink: it produces a bulk flavoring syrup to be drawn against carbonated water at the fountain. Everything hinges on the syrups being true fountain syrups rather than juices or cordials.
- The second measureThe pineapple syrup is 2½ pints, matching the printed page. That puts it in line with the vanilla and orange, so the three base syrups go in equal measure.
- YieldReading the garbled figure as 2½ pints, the batch comes to 9 pints, about a gallon and an eighth. At the usual fountain draw of 1 to 1½ fl oz per glass that is roughly 95 to 145 servings, so scale down hard for home use — a tenth of the formula is a sensible trial batch.
- What "syrup" means hereFountain syrups of the period were heavy sugar syrups, commonly cited in the region of 26 to 30 degrees Baumé, far denser and sweeter than a modern juice or flavoured syrup. Substituting bottled fruit juice or a modern coffee syrup gives a thin, under-sweet result that will not hold up against soda water.
- Orange syrupIn a fountain formulary this would most likely mean a compounded orange syrup built on peel oil, acid and sugar rather than plain juice, though the recipe does not say. Straight orange juice in simple syrup will taste flat and keeps poorly.
- "French" and "sherbet"Neither word means quite what it does now. At the fountain a sherbet was a drink rather than a frozen dessert, often built with a gum or egg-albumen foam base; what "French" signalled in this title is unclear, and the recipe does not say. Nothing is frozen and no ice cream machine is involved.
- Strain properlyMix and strain means through muslin or a fine cloth, not a colander. Pineapple syrup throws pulp and the sherry can drop a light haze; unstrained syrup clouds the glass and clogs a pump.
- AlcoholThe sherry and grape juice work out to under a fifth of the volume, so a 1½ oz draw carries only a trace of alcohol. It is there for depth, not strength, and a dry amontillado-style sherry suits the fruit better than a cream sherry.
- Keeping itHigh sugar plus wine keeps this reasonably well, but modern low-density syrups will ferment. Refrigerate, and expect the sherry note to fade within a few weeks.
Soda-fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the home cook, and they read like formularies: batch quantities in pints and gallons, numbered variants of the same flavor, and the assumption that the reader already stocks a rack of standard syrups. The numbering here — the fourth sherbet formula in the run — suggests that fountains traded competitively on proprietary flavors, though a bare numbered title tells us little on its own. The casual pint and a half of sherry dates the book to before national Prohibition took effect in 1920, after which wine and spirits disappeared from American fountain formulas. That the fountain trade absorbed so much of the old wine-and-cordial repertoire is often given as one reason soda fountains boomed through the 1920s.