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Grape Orange
Grape Syrup Orange Syrup, ½ ounce; Soda water, large stream, ½ ounce; A dash of Acid Phosphate. Stir with spoon, 7 ounces. An electric fan means no flies. Think it over.
A two-syrup fountain drink of the kind dispensers were expected to build in about fifteen seconds. The proportions are terse and the typesetting is imperfect, so read the measures with some care.
- What the line actually saysThe most sensible reading is grape syrup ½ ounce and orange syrup ½ ounce, soda water drawn in a large (coarse) stream to fill, and a dash of acid phosphate, stirred, in a 7-ounce glass. The second "½ ounce" almost certainly belongs to the orange syrup rather than to the soda; a half-ounce of soda water would not be a drink.
- Fountain ouncesHalf an ounce is a tablespoon. Two tablespoons of syrup in a 7-ounce glass is roughly a 1:6 syrup-to-water ratio, lighter than most modern homemade sodas and worth tasting before you scale it up.
- Large stream vs. fine streamFountain apparatus had two draws. The coarse or "large" stream delivered soda fast with less agitation, used for filling; the fine stream was a needle jet used to whip and foam. Here you want the glass filled quickly, not foamed.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a souring agent. It is tart without the fruit character of citrus or the fruitiness of citric acid. It is still made for cocktail and soda use; a dash means a few drops to about ¼ teaspoon.
- Period syrupsFountain grape and orange syrups were heavy sugar syrups, denser than a modern 1:1 simple syrup. If you use a thinner homemade syrup, increase the volume or the drink will read as flat and watery.
- Order of buildSyrups first, phosphate onto the syrup, then soda, which is the usual order in fountain practice.
- YieldOne 7-ounce glass, which is the small end of modern soda service.
- The last two sentences"An electric fan means no flies. Think it over." is a filler aphorism for the soda dispenser, not part of the recipe. Trade manuals of the period padded short entries with shop advice this way.
American soda fountains of the early twentieth century worked from books exactly like this one: hundreds of one-line formulas, each a combination of stock syrups and a few acids and extracts, so a dispenser could answer any call from the counter without thinking. Acid phosphate is the marker of the era; phosphoric acid preparations were sold to fountains by the gallon and were understood, in the loose therapeutic language of the period, as tonic as much as flavoring. The stray note about the electric fan reflects the other half of the trade's anxieties, since a fountain was a food business with open syrup jars, and screening and air movement were among the era's answers to flies.