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Frostina
Three-fourths glass finely cracked ice, ¾ ounce pineapple syrup, 1 teaspoonful lemon juice, 1 teaspoonful raspberry vinegar. Place mixing spoon in glass and turn on plain syrup in a coarse stream to almost fill. Add a little shaved ice, and on top of the ice place crushed strawberries. Between the glass and ice place one slice of orange. Serve with spoon and straws.
A fountain drink built in the glass rather than shaken, so the order of assembly is the whole technique. Everything here is doable at home once you know what two of the ingredients actually were.
- Raspberry vinegarThis is the sweetened raspberry shrub syrup of the fountain trade, not the sharp salad vinegar sold today. Steep crushed raspberries in cider vinegar for a few days, strain, then cook the juice with roughly an equal weight of sugar; a teaspoon of modern raspberry vinegar in its place will read as sour rather than fruity.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain syrup" was a heavy simple syrup, on the order of two parts sugar to one of water by weight. The glass is already three-quarters full of cracked ice, so the syrup fills the gaps and the space above, but it still makes an intensely sweet drink by current taste; a lighter 1:1 syrup, or syrup cut with soda water, is closer to what most people will want.
- The coarse streamTurning the syrup on in a coarse stream over a mixing spoon set in the glass would keep it from boring a channel straight through the cracked ice, though the book does not say why. Pouring against the back of the spoon spreads the syrup across the ice.
- Two kinds of iceThe recipe distinguishes finely cracked ice at the bottom from shaved ice added on top. The shaved ice forms a bed for the strawberries and keeps them from sinking, though the book gives no reason for the distinction.
- Measures and glassThree-quarters of an ounce is a tablespoon and a half. The recipe assumes a fountain glass of unstated size, filled almost to the top; makes one drink.
- Pineapple syrupUse a fruit syrup made from pineapple juice cooked with sugar, or a bar-quality pineapple syrup. Canned pineapple juice alone lacks the body the recipe expects and will thin the drink.
- The orange slice"Between the glass and ice" means the slice is pressed flat against the inside wall of the glass before the ice goes in, so it shows through as a disc rather than perching on the rim. Cut it thin, no more than an eighth of an inch.
The soda fountain trade ran on a wall of bottled fruit syrups, and books like this one existed to teach dispensers how to combine them into named drinks that could be advertised on a placard. Names such as Frostina belong to that trade: coined, faintly Latinate, and meant to signal cold and luxury rather than to describe any traditional dish. Raspberry vinegar is the period detail worth noticing here. Shrubs, made by steeping fruit in vinegar and sweetening the result, were a standard American summer cooler well before commercial carbonation, valued because the acid preserved the fruit through the hot months; by the time this book was written the shrub had been absorbed into the fountain as one syrup among dozens, used a teaspoon at a time to give sugar-heavy drinks a bit of edge. The layered assembly, with fruit and shaved ice on top and a straw and long spoon supplied, reflects the fact that a fountain drink was sold partly on its looks to the customer sitting at the marble counter.