Home › At the Fountain › Ginger Ale Syrup, Dublin
Ginger Ale Syrup, Dublin
American Dublin Ginger Ale Extract, 1½ ounces; Simple Syrup, 1 gallon; American Lime Juice, 8 ounces; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce; American Sarsaparilla Color, ¼ ounce. Don't forget that soda is not like an ordinary purchase. People require some things, but they must be tempted to soda.
This is a fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: a bulk flavoring syrup to be drawn by the ounce and finished with carbonated water at the point of service. Nearly every named ingredient is a proprietary trade product from a supply house, so the work of reproducing it is mostly a matter of substitution.
- Extract quantityThe extract measure was checked against the printed page and reads 1½ ounces to the gallon of syrup, as given here. Fountain formulas of the period use only a small quantity of ginger extract per gallon, so start at about 1 ounce per gallon and taste up.
- Simple syrupAt the fountain this meant a heavy syrup, considerably denser than the thin 1:1 syrup used in bars today. A thinner syrup will dispense weaker and spoil faster.
- Ginger ale extractA concentrated alcoholic tincture of ginger with lemon and other oils. No supermarket equivalent exists; use a commercial ginger extract or a strong ginger tincture, and expect to adjust, since strengths vary several-fold between makers.
- Soda foamA saponin solution, generally made from quillaia (soapbark) or yucca, sold to give a lasting head. Quillaia extract is still permitted as a foaming agent in beverages at low levels and is sold for that purpose; the half-ounce per gallon here is a head-retention aid, not a flavor, and the syrup works without it.
- Sarsaparilla colorIn the trade this generally meant a caramel-based coloring rather than any sarsaparilla flavoring. A quarter ounce per gallon simply tints the syrup; plain caramel color does the same job.
- Lime juice"American lime juice" was a bottled, preserved juice, sharper and flatter than fresh. Eight ounces to the gallon is about 6 percent of the volume, so it is doing real acid work — do not omit it, and if using fresh juice, add it last and keep the finished syrup refrigerated.
- Dispensing and yieldA gallon of syrup makes roughly 100 to 128 drinks at the standard 1 to 1¼ ounces of syrup topped with 6 to 8 ounces of carbonated water. Stir gently or the foam agent will be wasted before it reaches the glass.
American soda books of the early twentieth century sold ginger ale by nationality: "Dublin," "Belfast," and later "Canadian" or "dry" styles all appeared on the same syrup list, each a house approximation of an imported original. Irish bottlers, Cantrell & Cochrane of Belfast and Dublin above all, had built the reputation of golden, sweetish, strongly gingered ale through the nineteenth century, and the names on this page trade on that reputation more than on any documented recipe — the Dublin and Belfast labels are conventionally taken to mark degrees of dryness and color rather than any real difference in origin. What the formula really records is the American fountain's method: buy the flavor as a concentrated extract, buy the color and the foam separately, and build the drink from parts. The closing remark about tempting customers is the authentic voice of the genre, since these books were written for druggists whose fountain was a profit center and whose syrup list was advertising.