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Grape Cordial
Grape syrup, 1 ounce; strained honey, 1 ounce; cocoa wine, 1 ounce. Draw into 12-ounce glass, add shaved ice and fill solid with carbonated water; garnish with slice of orange or pineapple and cherry; serve with straw. This is a splendid tonic and stimulant.
A fountain formula in the standard three-syrup pattern, but one of its three ingredients cannot be bought or made legally today, and the drink cannot be reconstructed as written.
- The problem is the "cocoa wine"Period fountain and pharmacy texts are inconsistent about these spellings, and "cocoa wine" is sometimes found where coca wine is plainly meant: a fortified wine carrying an extract of coca leaf, in the manner of Vin Mariani. The tonic-and-stimulant claim at the end may point that way, though it is not proof. If coca was intended, the leaf and its alkaloid are controlled substances and no equivalent preparation is available.
- The ambiguity does not rescue itIf the author truly meant a cacao-flavoured wine, that too is a product no longer on the shelf, and the particular preparation intended here cannot be identified, so the proportions cannot be matched. Either way the recipe is not reproducible as written. Use a current chocolate or grape soda recipe instead.
- Alcohol at the fountainBoth readings of the ingredient are wine-based, which is worth noting on a fountain formula: drinks labelled "tonic" in this literature were not reliably non-alcoholic, and this one is built on an ounce of wine.
- Ounces here are fluid ouncesSyrup, honey and wine were all drawn by measure at the fountain, an ounce being two tablespoons. "Fill solid" appears to mean filling the glass full with carbonated water rather than merely to the rim.
- YieldOne 12-ounce glass, roughly three ounces of flavouring to nine of ice and soda.
The soda fountain sat squarely between the drugstore and the confectionery, and its formula books read accordingly: a "cordial" or "tonic" was dispensed by the same clerk who filled prescriptions, and the closing sales line -- "a splendid tonic and stimulant" -- was as much a claim of therapeutic value as of flavour. Coca-leaf wines were widely advertised as restoratives for fatigue and nervous exhaustion, following the success of the French coca wine marketed by Angelo Mariani from the 1860s onward. Federal labelling and narcotics legislation -- the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 -- ended that trade, which is why a formula of this kind survives only on the page. The grape syrup and strained honey, by contrast, are simply good fountain practice.