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Grape Chill
Partly fill a thin glass with cracked ice, and pour in as much grape juice as the glass will accommodate. Serve with or without a straw. This is a most satisfactory drink.
A two-ingredient fountain drink whose success rests entirely on the grape juice, since there is nothing else to hide behind.
- The grape juiceFountain-era grape juice meant unfermented Concord juice, sweet and dark. Modern Concord juice from the chilled case is the closest match; white grape juice or grape drink made with added flavouring will taste thin here.
- "A thin glass"Thin-walled glassware was common at the fountain, and it chills fast in the hand. A 10 to 12 oz tumbler suits the drink; the recipe says only to fill it partly with ice, so about halfway is a reasonable reading.
- Cracked, not cubedCracked ice is cube ice smashed to irregular pieces roughly the size of a hazelnut. The greater surface area chills the juice almost instantly, and it packs so the juice fills the gaps rather than sitting on top.
- DilutionCracked ice melts quickly, so the drink is best handed over and drunk at once. Left standing it will turn watery.
- YieldOne glass. Reckon about 6 oz of juice into a half-filled 12 oz tumbler.
- If it tastes flatConcord juice is very sweet and can read as heavy. A squeeze of lemon, or an ounce of plain soda water for lift, will sharpen it.
Grape juice earned its place at the soda fountain largely through the temperance movement: pasteurised unfermented juice, developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and generally traced to Methodist enthusiasm for a non-alcoholic communion wine, gave druggists a fruit flavour that was both respectable and shelf-stable. By the time fountain manuals like this one were printed, bottled Concord juice was a standard back-bar item, poured plain over ice, mixed with soda, or built into phosphates and lemonades. The recipe's brevity is telling — the fountain clerk was not being taught to cook, only to be reminded that a cold glass of good juice sells itself, and the closing line reads as much like a sales note as a cook's instruction.