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Grape Cup
One pint grape juice, 1 ounce English breakfast tea (concentrated), 4 ounces prepared lime juice, ½ ounce acid solution phosphate, 1 pint water. Add a lump of ice and let stand until cold. Fill glass ¾ full and fill with plain soda, as it is served.
A fountain base to be mixed in advance, chilled, then diluted with soda at the moment of serving. Everything here is measured in fluid ounces, and the proportions are for a batch, not a single glass.
- What the ounces meanAll the small measures are fluid ounces: 1 oz is 2 tablespoons, 4 oz is half a cup, ½ oz is 1 tablespoon. Adding the two pints to the smaller measures gives about 37½ fluid ounces of base, a little over a quart.
- Concentrated teaThe recipe asks only for concentrated English breakfast, i.e. tea brewed considerably stronger than for drinking. Brew it strong, cool it, and measure 2 tablespoons.
- Prepared lime juiceMost likely a bottled, sweetened lime preparation rather than fresh juice; a lime syrup or cordial of the Rose's type is the nearest current equivalent. With plain fresh lime juice the drink will be sharply sour, since nothing else in the formula carries sugar beyond the grape.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium and other mineral salts, used across the soda counter to give a dry, tart bite that citric acid does not. It is still manufactured for cocktail and soda work; there is no household substitute that tastes the same, and lemon juice only adds more fruit.
- Grape juiceUnsweetened juice is wanted; Concord was the common American bottled grape juice of the period and works well here. Modern grape juices labelled cocktail or blend are sweeter and will flatten the phosphate's edge.
- Plain sodaUnflavoured carbonated water from a siphon or a chilled bottle. Chill the base thoroughly first, as the recipe insists, since cold liquid holds carbonation and a lukewarm base will foam over and go flat.
- Yield and servingThe base fills roughly six 8-ounce glasses, each three-quarters base topped up with soda. Keep it refrigerated.
Soda fountain books of the early twentieth century are full of "cups" — pitcher drinks borrowed by name from the wine cups and claret cups of Victorian punch bowls, but built without alcohol for the drugstore counter. Tea appears often in these formulas as a source of tannin and body, though the recipes themselves do not say why, while acid phosphate supplied the dry mineral tang that was the signature taste of the American fountain from the 1870s through Prohibition. Grape juice had its own particular standing: pasteurized unfermented juice was widely promoted in this period as a temperance drink, so a grape cup was doubly respectable, and the dispenser could sell it as both a treat and a tonic.