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Frozen Phosphates
As its name suggests it is the coldest drink in the world, and is the best served in the following flavors: orange, lemon, pineapple, raspberry, grape, cherry, claret, champagne and chocolate. Draw into a mineral glass 1 ounce of any one of the above flavors, add a dash of phosphate, draw the glass almost full, add a good-sized spoonful of orange ice, and serve with a straw. The orange ice, besides making the drink intensely cold, gives it a delicious flavor, as orange blends well with any of the flavors mentioned above. To make orange ice proceed as follows: 1 ounce granulated gelatin, 5 quarts water, 1 quart syrup, the juice of 6 lemons, 1 pint of orangeade, 1 pint crushed or sliced orange. Dissolve the gelatin in i quart boiling hot water, add the syrup and balance of water, and stir in the lemon juice. Put in freezer and freeze till thick, then add the orangeade and crushed orange, and freeze very hard.
A soda-fountain formula, written for someone standing behind a marble counter with a carbonator and a bank of syrup pumps. Everything here translates to a home kitchen except the draught arm, which a siphon or a bottle of cold seltzer replaces.
- What "phosphate" meansNot a flavor but acid phosphate — a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a souring agent. It gives a dry, mineral tartness that citric acid does not. It is still manufactured for the cocktail and soda trade; a dash is usually reckoned at somewhere around a quarter teaspoon, though fountain dash bottles varied.
- The flavors are syrupsOrange, raspberry, claret and champagne here are fountain syrups, not the beverages. Claret and champagne syrups were normally sold as alcohol-free flavor imitations, so a drink made with them would not usually be intoxicating.
- Mineral glass and "draw"A mineral glass is a straight-sided fountain glass, of the order of eight to twelve ounces. "Draw the glass almost full" means filling with carbonated water from the fountain arm — use well-chilled seltzer, poured against the side to keep the gas.
- Syrup"1 quart syrup" in a soda book means plain simple syrup, generally made at about two parts sugar to one of water and heavy enough to hold a hydrometer reading. Do not substitute a flavored syrup here.
- Why gelatinOne ounce of granulated gelatin in five quarts of liquid is a stabilizer, not a setting agent. It keeps the ice smooth and slows melting in a warm shop; modern sorbets use the same trick with glucose or a small amount of gelatin or stabilizer gum.
- OrangeadeA fountain staple: orange juice sweetened and diluted with syrup and water. Fresh orange juice cut with a little simple syrup will do the job.
- "Put in freezer"The freezer is a hand-crank ice-cream churn packed with ice and rock salt. An ice-cream machine works; the fruit goes in near the end, as the original says, so the churning is not blocked.
- YieldThe ice makes something over seven quarts — a shop batch. Scale it to a fifth for a home churn. Each finished drink takes one large spoonful of ice, so a single batch serves a great many glasses.
Phosphates were the workhorse of the American soda fountain from roughly the 1870s through Prohibition, when the fountain became the main public place to buy a cold drink. Acid phosphate was marketed both as a flavoring and as a tonic — the best-known brand, Horsford's, was sold on the strength of nineteenth-century claims about phosphorus and nervous exhaustion — and dispensers kept a bottle beside the syrups to give any sweet drink a sharper edge. The frozen phosphate is a dispenser's refinement on that formula: a spoonful of fruit ice does the work that shaved ice would do in a cheaper shop, chilling the glass without watering the syrup. Trade manuals like this one existed to teach apprentice clerks the standing repertoire and the shop-scale batch recipes behind it, which is why a five-quart ice sits inside a single drink's instructions.