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Frosted Cream Root Beer
One and one-half ounces root beer; 3 ounces sweet cream; ¼ glass cracked ice. Shake, fill with coarse stream. Strain and serve.
A fountain drink built in a shaker rather than a mixing glass: cream, syrup and ice shaken to a froth, then lengthened with soda water. It is a single serving and it must be drunk at once.
- "Root beer" means syrupFountain formulas call for the sweetened root beer syrup or extract concentrate, not bottled root beer. Use 1½ oz (3 tablespoons) of a concentrated root beer syrup; bottled soda substituted straight will be thin and flat once shaken.
- Sweet creamSweet cream is simply fresh unsoured cream. Any fresh cream will do; a richer heavy cream gives the fullest body. 3 oz is a scant half cup, which makes this a rich drink rather than a light one.
- Coarse streamSoda fountain taps offered more than one draw: a fine stream for gentle filling and a coarse or heavy stream that came out fast and hard to agitate the glass and build foam. At home, pour chilled seltzer briskly down the centre of the glass.
- Shake brieflyA short shake, on the order of ten or fifteen seconds, is the usual guidance. The purpose is aeration and chilling, not dilution, and a long shake over cracked ice waters the cream down.
- Strain, then fillStrain -- As written, the soda is drawn into the shaker and the whole is then strained into the serving glass. If you prefer to keep more of the carbonation, strain the shaken cream and syrup first and add the soda in the glass.
- CurdlingSome root beer syrups and extracts are acidic enough to make cream separate on standing. Serve immediately; a drink left to sit may show flecks.
- YieldOne drink. Scaling up is pointless since the foam collapses fast.
Root beer began as a home-brewed small beer of sassafras, sarsaparilla, birch and wintergreen, and its move to the soda fountain is generally traced to Charles Hires, who marketed a root beer extract in Philadelphia in the 1870s. By the time trade manuals like this one were printed, root beer syrup was standard fountain stock. "Frosted" in fountain language was used loosely and its sense varied from house to house, often implying ice cream in the drink; where it meant a drink shaken with cream and cracked ice until it came up cold and foaming, the cream both softened the sharp root flavours and gave the drink the thick collar of foam that customers were paying for.