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Fruit Glace
Two ounces fruit syrup, 1 teaspoonful powdered sugar, 2 ounces cracked ice, sufficient carbonated water. Mix syrup, sugar and ice with about 9 ounces of the water, stir, strain into glass containing slice of pineapple, peach, orange or lemon, and a few selected berries of small fruit.
A soda-fountain formula written for a dispenser working behind a marble counter, so the quantities are given by fluid ounce and the technique assumes a shaker and a strainer. It scales to a single tall drink at home.
- Fluid ounces, not weight"Two ounces fruit syrup" means 1/4 cup by volume; the 9 ounces of carbonated water is a little over a cup. Total volume lands around 12 oz, so use a tall glass.
- Fruit syrupPeriod fountain syrup was a heavy sugar syrup, denser than a modern 1:1 simple syrup, flavoured with fruit juice or crushed fruit. Modern bottled Italian-style soda syrups are the closest equivalent; fruit preserves thinned with hot water also work.
- The powdered sugarIn this period "powdered sugar" usually meant finely ground granulated rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioner's sugar sold today. Superfine sugar is a reasonable substitute, and it can be left out if your syrup is already sweet.
- Mix off the carbonationThe hinge of the drink: syrup, sugar and ice are stirred with the water and then strained away from the ice into a clean glass. Shaking or prolonged stirring flattens the soda, so work quickly and stir just enough to chill and dissolve.
- Cracked iceTwo ounces is only a small handful of ice broken into pieces. Cracked ice chills with less dilution than crushed ice.
- Cold water mattersFountains dispensed carbonated water chilled and under pressure. Use soda water straight from the refrigerator; warm soda will foam over the syrup and lose its gas before the drink reaches the table.
- The garnish is the dishThe garnish -- Put the slice and the berries in the serving glass before straining, as the recipe directs, so the liquid settles around them.
- YieldOne drink. Serve immediately with a long spoon and a straw.
Soda-fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the dispenser rather than the housewife, and they codified hundreds of near-identical formulas so that a drink ordered in one town tasted like the same drink in another. "Glace" here is borrowed from French for iced or glazed, and in fountain usage it is often said to have marked a drink built on syrup, ice and plain carbonated water, as against a phosphate (which added acid), a lemonade (fresh juice) or an ice cream soda. The garnish of sliced pineapple, peach or orange with a few berries reflects the era's fountains stocking fresh and canned fruit alongside the syrup rail; pineapple in particular had become cheap and dependable in tins by the turn of the century.