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Fruitine
Two heaping teaspoonfuls powdered sugar, glass ⅓ full cracked ice, add juice 1½ lemon, ¼ orange, 4 fresh strawberries, a slice of pineapple and 2 maraschino cherries, add soda to fill glass, stir thoroughly, and serve with a straw garnished with mint.
A fountain fruit cup rather than a mixed drink: no syrup bottle, just fresh juice, sugar and carbonated water. It works if the fruit is genuinely ripe and the soda genuinely cold.
- The glassFountain recipes of this era generally assume a soda glass of around 10-12 oz. A third full of cracked ice is only a few ounces by volume, and "soda to fill" then comes to perhaps 6 oz of carbonated water.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain usage this means finely ground sugar for quick dissolving, not necessarily today's cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. Superfine (caster) sugar is the closer match; two heaping teaspoons is around 3 teaspoons level.
- SodaFountain soda was carbonated water drawn under pressure and typically more sharply gassed than bottled club soda. Use seltzer straight from a fresh bottle or a carbonator and pour down the side of the glass to keep the fizz.
- Dissolve firstThe recipe adds sugar first and asks only that the drink be stirred thoroughly. Working the sugar into the citrus juice before the ice and soda go in helps, since sugar dissolves poorly in ice-cold water and undissolved grit settles under the fruit.
- Juice quantitiesA lemon and a half yields about 3 tablespoons of juice, a quarter orange about 1 tablespoon. Adjust the sugar upward if the lemons are large or the fruit underripe.
- The fruitThe recipe does not call for muddling, only stirring. Crushing the strawberries and pineapple lightly against the sugar and juice will carry more flavour into the liquid, though the fruit may equally have been meant to be eaten from the glass.
- Maraschino cherriesTrue maraschino cherries were marasca cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, but by this period American fountains were often supplied with imitation cherries, sweetened, dyed and free of alcohol. A good brandied or Luxardo-style cherry is closer to the original article.
- YieldOne tall glass. Scaling up works, but mix the fruit and sugar base in a pitcher and add soda glass by glass.
Soda fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried hundreds of fruit-and-seltzer formulas, and coined names of this kind were common in the trade. Fruitine appears to be a house name rather than a traditional dish: lemons, oranges, berries, pineapple and a jar of maraschino cherries would all have been within the dispenser's reach. American soda counters of the period did compete with saloons by offering elaborate unfermented drinks. Mint served with a straw recalls the older julep and cobbler service, where the mint was meant to be smelled as the drink was tasted.