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Ginger and Grape Juice Floats
These are very dainty drinks and good trade winners where there is a demand for this kind of drink. First make a soda lemonade, only do not kind of drink. First make a soda lemonade, only do not fill the glass full; leave a space of about an inch from the top. Mix your drink and decorate; now pour over the top the ginger ale or desired grape juice, etc., and you have very nice drinks, winners in the summer weather.
A fountain formula rather than a measured recipe: it assumes you already know how to build a soda lemonade and only tells you what to do with the last inch of the glass. The printed text stutters partway through ("only do not kind of drink"), an artifact of the original typesetting; nothing is missing from the method.
- Soda lemonade, decodedAt the fountain this generally meant an ounce or so of lemon syrup (or the juice of half a lemon with simple syrup) drawn into the glass, then filled with carbonated water; proportions varied from house to house. No dairy, no ice cream — the float here is fruit juice or ginger ale, not a cream float.
- Glass and headroomAssume a 10 to 12 oz fountain glass. The inch of space is the whole point: leaving it means the float sits as a visible band instead of mixing in, and it also keeps the carbonation from foaming over when the second liquid goes in.
- How to make the float holdPour the ginger ale or grape juice slowly over the back of a spoon held just above the surface. The layer is fragile either way and will streak into the drink before long, so serve immediately.
- Grape juicePeriod fountains used unfermented bottled Concord juice. Any unsweetened Concord juice works; sweetened blends will make the drink cloying against the lemon syrup.
- Ginger alePeriod ginger ales included markedly dry, sharply gingery styles alongside sweeter golden ones. A dry ginger ale, or ginger beer cut with soda water, gives a bite closer to the sharper end of that range.
- "Decorate"The original leaves this to the dispenser. A lemon or orange slice on the rim, a cherry, or a sprig of mint are all plausible; the recipe has the garnish go in before the float.
- YieldOne drink per glass. Scaling is a matter of repetition, not multiplication — floats do not survive being mixed in a pitcher.
Soda-fountain manuals of the early twentieth century were written for the dispenser behind the counter, which is why this entry reads like a note to a colleague: it names a trade advantage ("good trade winners") before it names an ingredient. The float — one liquid poured to rest on another — was a cheap way to turn a plain lemonade into a showier drink, and books of this kind are full of such small upgrades. Bottled unfermented grape juice was a fountain staple in this period, promoted heavily by temperance interests as a respectable alternative to wine, and ginger ale occupied similar ground; both were sold as wholesome drinks a druggist could pour without apology. The fountain itself sat in the drugstore, which is why so many of these formulas are phrased in the language of the dispensing counter.