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Ginger Puff
Ginger syrup, 1 ounce; lemon syrup, ½ ounce; cream syrup, ½ ounce; whipped cream, 1 spoonful. Half fill a 12-ounce glass with carbonated water, using coarse and fine streams, and then fill with ginger ale on draft.
A fountain formula, written for a soda dispenser working with a bank of syrup pumps and a two-stream draught arm. Translated to a home kitchen it is a tall ginger cream soda, and it comes together in under a minute.
- The ounces are fluid ouncesFountain syrups were pumped rather than weighed, and syrup pumps were commonly set to throw about an ounce a stroke, though other sizes were used. So 1 oz ginger syrup, ½ oz lemon, ½ oz cream syrup — about 4 tablespoons of syrup in total.
- Coarse and fine streamsThe draught arm could deliver soda water as a heavy stream or as a fine one; dispenser manuals direct the coarse stream for mixing the syrup and the fine stream for finishing the glass. Modern equivalent: add a splash of soda water first and stir the syrups smooth, then top up gently so you do not knock the gas out.
- Cream syrupThe name is not a guarantee of dairy. Fountain formularies give it both ways: some cream syrups were made with cream or condensed milk, others were a plain sugar syrup flavoured to suggest it, usually with vanilla. A good vanilla syrup is the simplest stand-in.
- Ginger syrup vs. ginger aleThe drink uses both, and deliberately. The syrup carries sweetness and raw ginger heat; the draught ale on top supplies dryness and a second wave of carbonation. Substituting more ale for the syrup flattens it.
- Ginger ale on draftFountain ginger ale was drawn at the counter rather than poured from a bottle. A dry ginger ale is probably closer than a sweet golden style.
- The whipped creamA spoonful, floated rather than stirred in. The recipe does not say when it goes in, but a float on the finished glass is the usual reading of a drink of this type; the drinker pulls it down through the soda. Unsweetened cream suits it, since three syrups have already done that work.
- Glass and yieldA 12-ounce glass, one serving. Half of that volume is carbonated water, so build in a tall glass with no more than a little ice or the proportions collapse.
Books like this one were trade manuals, written for the men behind the marble counter rather than for anyone at home, and they read like formularies because that is what they were: hundreds of numbered syrup combinations a dispenser was expected to produce on demand. The "puff" is often said to have been a fountain category of its own — a drink finished with a float of whipped cream, lighter than an ice-cream soda and quicker to build during a rush — though the evidence is thin. Ginger was a fountain staple partly because ginger ale and ginger syrup were already stocked as digestive drinks; American soda fountains grew directly out of the pharmacy trade, and much of their early vocabulary of sarsaparilla, ginger and phosphates came from the dispensing counter rather than the confectioner's. Draught ginger ale, drawn from a keg beside the carbonated water, was standard equipment in a well-appointed fountain.