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Ginger Ale, Bouquet Flavor
To impart a delicate flavor to a fine ginger ale, add to each gallon of syrup ¾ ounce of American Bouquet Flavor.
This is a fountain formula rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already have a gallon of ginger ale syrup on hand and are adjusting its character. A few notes on what the quantities and the proprietary flavor actually mean.
- What "syrup" means hereSoda fountain syrup is a heavy simple syrup, roughly 6 to 7 lb of sugar dissolved per gallon of finished syrup, carrying the ginger extract. It is not the finished drink. At the fountain it was drawn at about 1 to 1½ fluid ounces per glass and filled with carbonated water, so a gallon makes something on the order of 100 servings.
- "American Bouquet Flavor"A proprietary compounded flavor sold to druggists, not a single ingredient. Named formulas are not given in the book, but "bouquet" flavors of the period were generally blends of citrus oils with a floral note, cut in alcohol; the exact make-up of this one is unknown. A citrus-and-neroli soda extract is the nearest thing in spirit, not in exact match.
- ¾ ounce is by weight, but treat it as fluidFountain flavors of this kind were alcoholic tinctures, so ¾ fluid ounce (about 22 ml) per gallon is the likely working reading. That is a dosing rate of roughly half a percent, within the normal range for a strong flavoring tincture.
- Add it cold and lastThe aromatics here are volatile citrus and floral oils. Stir the flavor into the syrup after it has cooled to room temperature; adding it to hot syrup drives off exactly the top notes the instruction is trying to add.
- Scaling downFor a quart of syrup, that is a generous 1 teaspoon (about 5.5 ml). Modern extracts vary widely in strength, so with anything other than a period-strength tincture, start at half and taste in a made-up glass rather than in the syrup, which is far too sweet to judge.
- Cloud and separationCitrus oils dropped into cold syrup will haze and can ring the top of the jug. Stir or shake the jug before drawing; a bottled version needs the same, or an emulsified flavor rather than a straight oil tincture.
American soda fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were written largely for pharmacists, who compounded their own syrups from bulk sugar, extracts and proprietary flavors bought from supply houses. Ginger ale was a fountain staple, and a formula like this suggests that the difference between an ordinary glass and a "fine" one could be a matter of small aromatic corrections rather than the ginger itself. Bouquet flavors offered the compounder a ready-made blend of citrus and floral essences to soften the sharp, resinous edge of ginger extract. Formulas like this one, a single line assuming the reader already keeps a gallon of syrup and a shelf of tinctures, give a fair picture of how the trade worked before bottlers standardized the flavor.