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Hiawatha Float
One-half ounce lemon juice; 1 dash angostura bitters; powdered sugar, ½ ounce brandy syrup; shaved ice. Shake well. Serve in lemonade glass. Fill glass nearly full of plain water, then float ½ ounce claret on top. Serve sliced fruit and straws. The sound of a fiddle makes a man want to dance; the odor of beefsteak makes him hungry; the sight of a tempting fountain awakens his thirst.
A fountain drink from the era when the soda clerk worked from a rail of syrups and a shaved-ice bin. The proportions are small because everything is measured in fluid ounces, and the finished drink is mostly water.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesHalf an ounce is one tablespoon; the drink carries only about 1 oz of flavoring before the water goes in, plus the ½ oz claret floated on top. Scale up if you want anything more assertive than a lightly tinted lemonade.
- Brandy syrupIn most fountain formulas a flavoring syrup rather than spirits: sugar syrup flavored to suggest brandy, though some period formulas did use real brandy. It has largely vanished from retail; a plain simple syrup with a few drops of brandy extract, or a spoonful of actual brandy plus simple syrup, gets you to the same place.
- Powdered sugarNo quantity is given; start with a scant teaspoon. Period "powdered" sugar is finer granulated, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now; superfine dissolves best in a cold shake.
- ClaretNineteenth-century trade shorthand for dry red Bordeaux, and by extension any dry red of that style. Half an ounce is a float for color and aroma, so use something with a deep hue rather than a pale, delicate wine.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved ice chills fast and packs tightly; cubes leave channels through which the claret can sink in streaks.
- The floatPour the claret slowly over the back of a bar spoon held just at the water line. Wine is close in density to sweetened water, so the layer is fragile — build it last and carry the glass level.
- Lemonade glassA tall straight-sided tumbler of roughly 10–12 oz. Fill "nearly full" means leaving headroom for the float.
- YieldOne glass. Sliced fruit and straws finish it, as the recipe directs.
The soda fountain of the 1890s and 1900s borrowed freely from the bar next door, and drinks like this one sit exactly on the line between the two: a shaken lemonade dressed with bitters and a spoonful of wine, served with straws rather than in a cocktail glass. Fountain manuals of the period are full of "floats," named for the layer of something heavier or more colorful poured on last — claret, port, or a scoop of ice cream. The Hiawatha name comes out of the long American vogue for Longfellow's 1855 poem, which put a stock of vaguely Native American names into circulation for everything from towns to steamboats to fountain drinks, generally with no connection to the recipe beyond the sound of it. The closing line about the fiddle and the beefsteak is the book talking to the trade, not to the customer: fountain manuals doubled as sales manuals.