Home › At the Fountain › Goodner's Mint Julep Phosphate Syrup
Goodner's Mint Julep Phosphate Syrup
Fresh mint leaves, handful. Scald in hot water; add ½ pound granulated ; rub in mortar sugar; rub in mortar, and when cool strain through cheese cloth in 1 gallon , and when cool strain through cheese cloth in 1 gallon plain syrup; add 4 drops oil lemon; 1 ounce fruit acid; color green.
A fountain syrup, not a drink: the finished gallon was kept in a pump jar and drawn an ounce at a time into a glass with acid phosphate and carbonated water. The text as printed is garbled by duplicated lines, but the sequence is clear — scald the mint, grind it with the sugar, cool, strain, and stir into a gallon of plain syrup.
- The hinge: scald, then grind coldThe hinge: scald, then grind with the sugar -- Hot water knocks back the raw grassy note, and the grinding with sugar helps bruise the leaves and release the oil. The recipe specifies straining only once the mixture has cooled.
- "Plain syrup"Fountain plain syrup was heavier than a household simple syrup. Ordinary 1:1 simple syrup will taste thin and will not keep as well.
- The half pound of sugar is extraIt is grinding sugar for the mortar, an abrasive to bruise the leaves, and it ends up in the gallon along with everything else. Do not deduct it from the syrup.
- "Fruit acid"Trade shorthand for a solution of citric or tartaric acid in water rather than dry crystals; strengths varied between houses. An ounce of dry citric acid in a gallon would be considerably sharper than intended.
- Oil of lemonLemon essential oil, and four drops in a gallon is deliberate restraint — it lifts the mint rather than reading as lemon. It will not disperse in water, so rub it into the sugar or a little syrup first.
- ColouringPeriod fountains used coal-tar dyes, some of which were later withdrawn. Use a modern food-grade green, added drop by drop; the mint itself contributes almost no colour after straining.
- "Phosphate" is added at the glassNothing in this syrup makes it a phosphate. The name refers to the dash of acid phosphate the dispenser added when drawing the drink, alongside the carbonated water.
- Yield and servingAbout a gallon, or roughly 100 to 128 servings at an ounce to an ounce and a quarter each. For a single glass: 1 oz syrup, a scant quarter-teaspoon acid phosphate, ice, fill with soda water.
- KeepingAt full fountain sugar strength it holds for weeks refrigerated, but the mint colour and aroma fade well before the syrup spoils. Make it in smaller batches than a gallon unless you are pouring volume.
The soda fountain spent the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries translating the bar list into temperance form, and the mint julep was an obvious candidate — the whole appeal of the drink was already mint, sugar, and cold, with the whiskey doing less work than the aroma. Phosphates were the fountain's signature sour: a few drops of acid phosphate, a dilute phosphoric acid preparation sold to druggists from the 1870s onward, gave a rounder, saltier tartness than lemon juice and was cheap and stable in a warm shop. Formula books like this one circulated under dispensers' names because a fountain's reputation rested on its house syrups, and a man with a good julep phosphate had something worth putting his name to. That the recipe survives in a printed compendium at all is a sign of how thoroughly the trade had professionalised by then, with its own supply chain of essential oils, fruit acids and coal-tar colours ordered by the pound.