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Ginger Ale Cobbler
Sugar one lump, 1 slice pineapple, dash of angostura bitters, ice; fill glass with ginger ale.
A fountain-era cobbler stripped down to four elements. It works if the sugar is dissolved and the ice is right; it fails if you drop a hard cube of sugar into cold soda and stir once.
- The hinge: dissolve the sugar firstA cube will sit at the bottom of a cold carbonated drink indefinitely. Muddle the lump with the bitters and a splash of the ginger ale before adding ice, or substitute a teaspoon of simple syrup.
- One lumpA sugar lump of this period was broadly comparable to a modern cube, on the order of a teaspoon, though sizes varied. Early ginger ales of the Belfast type were generally drier than many present-day brands, so a full lump may push a sweet ale over the edge.
- IceCobblers are characteristically made with crushed or shaved ice, which at a fountain would generally have been chipped from a block. Fill the glass with cracked or pebble ice rather than two large cubes.
- The pineappleCanned pineapple in syrup, sliced in rings, was widely available and is the likely source here, though the recipe does not specify. A fresh ring or a canned one both suit; muddle a corner of it with the sugar for flavour and stand the rest in the glass as garnish.
- Bitters are not alcohol-freeAngostura runs about 44 percent alcohol by volume. A dash contributes a negligible amount, but this is worth knowing if the drink is being served as a temperance beverage.
- Glass and yieldOne serving; the recipe does not specify a glass size. Cobblers were commonly drunk through a straw.
The cobbler began as an alcoholic drink: the sherry cobbler of the 1830s and 1840s, wine over shaved ice with sugar and fruit, drunk through a straw and famous enough that Dickens gave it a scene in Martin Chuzzlewit. What defined it was the ice and the fruit rather than the spirit, so when American soda fountains built out their menus in the late nineteenth century the form transferred easily. Bottled and draught ginger ale, then a fashionable and genuinely spicy product, stood in for the wine, and the Angostura supplied the bitter edge that sherry had given. Drinks like this one let a fountain offer something that looked and drank like a bar order across the counter of a drugstore, which is precisely why so many of them appear in fountain manuals of the period.