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Grape Syrup
American Grape Juice, 1 quart; Granulated sugar, 6½ lbs. Dissolve the sugar in 4 pints of water and add to the juice, also add 2½ ounces American Fruit Acid and ¾ ounce American Soda Foam. Japanese paper napkins cost only one-fourteenth of a cent. Occasionally they are much wanted. Keep a few on hand. Grape Syrup。 American Concentrated Grape Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; Fruit Acid Solution, 1 ounce. Gunther's "Excelsior."
A new cherry punch called Gunther's "Excelsior" punch is made as follows: Imported German cherry juice, 1 ounce; Rhine wine, 1 ounce; lemon juice, 1 dash; simple syrup, 1 ounce. Draw into 12-ounce glass, fill with solid carbonated water, garnish with cherries and pineapple and serve with straw. This is an expensive beverage and can be be made acceptably with American Cherry Juice.
Two grape syrup formulas for a soda fountain, plus a cherry punch, with a printer's stray advertisement for paper napkins dropped in the middle. Read it as a trade sheet rather than a home recipe: the quantities are bulk, and several ingredients are brand-name fountain supplies.
- The napkin line is not an ingredient"Japanese paper napkins cost only one-fourteenth of a cent" is filler copy from the surrounding page that ran into the recipe. Ignore it.
- Fruit acid quantityThe printed page gives 2½ ounces of American Fruit Acid, as our text now reads. Fruit acid solutions varied in strength by maker, so there is no exact modern equivalent; acidify to taste with a citric acid solution.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain" or "simple" syrup of the period was heavy, roughly 2 lb sugar to 1 pint water, near saturation at about 65 Brix. Modern equal-weight simple syrup is much thinner, so the second formula will taste weaker and keep less well than intended.
- American Soda FoamA proprietary foaming agent, typically an extract of quillaia (soap bark) saponins, sold to give drawn sodas a head. It is not a grocery item today and saponin foamers are now used only under regulated limits. Leave it out; the syrup is unaffected in flavor.
- Concentrated grape syrupThe second formula assumes a commercial concentrate, not bottled juice. Boiled-down grape juice or unsweetened grape concentrate from the freezer case is the nearest substitute, though it will be sweeter and less sharp.
- Dissolving the sugarSix and a half pounds of sugar in four pints of water needs heat and patience; warm it and stir until wholly clear before the juice goes in, or the syrup will grain in the bottle. Add the juice off the heat to keep the fresh grape flavor.
- Yield and useThe first formula makes roughly a gallon and a quarter of syrup, enough for well over a hundred drinks. Fountain practice was 1 to 1½ ounces of syrup in a glass filled with carbonated water. Scale to a fifth or a tenth for a home batch.
- The punchGunther's "Excelsior" is an ounce each of cherry juice, Rhine wine and simple syrup with a dash of lemon, drawn into a 12-ounce glass. Rhine wine here means a German white from the Rhine, usually Riesling; the drink is very lightly alcoholic once the soda goes in.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were written for the dispenser behind the marble counter, not the cook, which is why the measures run in quarts and half-pounds and why so many ingredients are trade goods with capital letters. Unfermented grape juice became a fountain staple after bottled pasteurized juice was commercialized in the later nineteenth century — the venture generally traced to Thomas Welch, a Methodist dentist who pasteurized juice as a communion wine substitute — and it suited the temperance sympathies of many fountain proprietors while tasting rich enough to sell at a premium. The cherry punch shows the other side of the trade: imported German cherry juice and Rhine wine were prestige ingredients, and the book's own note that the drink "can be made acceptably with American Cherry Juice" is a candid piece of advice about margins.