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Grape Fruit Syrup
American Concentrated Grape Fruit Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; American Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain dispenser's formula rather than a domestic recipe: four gallons of finished syrup built from trade products, to be drawn an ounce at a time under carbonated water. Nearly all the work of translating it is in identifying what the branded ingredients were.
- "Grape fruit" means grapefruitIn fountain books of this era grape fruit generally denotes the citrus rather than the grape. A concentrated grapefruit syrup would have been a sweetened, reduced juice extract bought in from a supply house.
- Plain syrupFountain plain syrups were generally heavy: formulas of around 2 pounds of sugar per pint of water, which works out near 65 Brix, are common, and much thicker than a 1:1 syrup. Using a thin 1:1 syrup here gives a more watery, less sweet result that will also keep less well.
- American Fruit AcidA proprietary acidulant, generally a dilute solution of citric or tartaric acid in water. This matters: an ounce of a liquid solution and an ounce of dry citric acid powder are nowhere near the same strength, and the original does not say which. Add acid to taste in small increments rather than trusting the ounce.
- Weight or volumeFountain formulas of the period often used fluid ounces for liquids and avoirdupois ounces for solids without distinguishing them. Read the acid as fluid ounces if you are working from a bottled solution.
- Yield and dispensingOne quart of concentrate plus three of plain syrup gives a gallon of finished syrup. At the customary 1 to 1.25 ounces of syrup per glass topped with carbonated water, that is about a hundred drinks.
- Working from fresh fruit insteadIf you substitute fresh grapefruit juice for the concentrate, cut the plain syrup sharply and you may be able to omit the added acid, since the juice brings its own; the concentrate it replaced was presumably a reduced and sweetened product rather than straight juice.
- KeepingA syrup at full fountain sugar concentration is reasonably shelf-stable, but any version made with fresh juice should be refrigerated and used within a week.
Grapefruit reached American markets late — commercial Florida plantings expanded through the 1880s and 1890s, and the fruit was still something of a novelty when soda fountains hit their stride around 1900. That novelty is exactly why it turns up here. Fountain manuals of the period are less collections of cookery than trade catalogues in recipe form: the operator bought concentrated fruit syrups, acids and flavouring extracts from a supply house, and the "recipe" told him the proportions in which to cut them with his own plain syrup. The blank labels — American Concentrated Grape Fruit Syrup, American Fruit Acid — are brand names, and the acid is there because reducing and sweetening a juice concentrate flattens its sharpness, which had to be put back before the drink would taste like fruit under a charge of soda water.