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Honey Dew
Prepare syrup like this: One pint pineapple syrup, 1 pint vanilla syrup, 1 pint lemon syrup, 3 drams strained honey, 2 drams American Fruit Acid, 4 drams soda foam. Serve like ordinary lemon syrup.
A fountain formula rather than a drink: it makes a bulk flavoring syrup that is then drawn with carbonated water to order. Almost everything here needs translating, since the measures are apothecaries' and two of the ingredients were trade goods sold to soda dispensers rather than cooks.
- DramsA fluid dram is 1/8 fluid ounce, about 3.7 mL, or roughly three-quarters of a teaspoon. So 3 drams of honey is about 2 1/4 teaspoons and 4 drams of foam about 1 tablespoon. If the honey was meant by weight (an apothecaries' dram is about 3.9 g) the difference is trivial at this scale.
- Total yieldThree pints of syrup, near enough, which at the usual fountain draw of 1 to 1 1/2 fluid ounces per glass gives about 32 to 48 servings.
- American Fruit AcidA proprietary acid preparation sold to fountains; preparations of this kind were generally solutions of citric or tartaric acid in water. Its job is to sharpen the sweetness. Plain citric acid dissolved in an equal weight of water is the nearest current stand-in, added by taste rather than by the stated dram.
- Soda foamA foaming agent, in this period usually an extract of quillaia (soap bark) or a solution of egg albumen, added so the drawn drink held a head. Quillaia extract is still permitted in soft drinks but only at low levels and is not a general retail item; the syrup works without it and simply looks flatter.
- Fountain syrups are not flavored watersPineapple, vanilla and lemon syrups here mean full-strength fountain stock, roughly a saturated sugar syrup carrying the flavoring. Substituting modern coffee-bar syrups will give a thinner, sweeter, less acidic result.
- Serving"Serve like ordinary lemon syrup" presumably means an ounce or so of syrup into the glass, then carbonated water drawn onto it and stirred. Whether ice was added would have been up to the counter; a chilled glass and cold soda arguably matter more than ice, which dilutes the draw.
- The honey is a signature, not a sweetenerTwo teaspoons across three pints will not sweeten anything. It is there for aroma and for the name, so use a strongly perfumed honey if you want it to register at all.
Soda fountain manuals of the 1890s and 1900s are largely books of proprietary formulas: a dispenser bought bulk syrups, acids and foaming preparations from supply houses and blended them into house specialties with appealing names, among them names of this kind. Honeydew in this sense is the older word for a sweet sticky exudation, and the fanciful drink names of the period often traded on that kind of association rather than on any single named fruit; the honeydew melon became widely known in the United States somewhat later, in the years around 1910. The recipe's structure tells you how the trade worked, with the actual flavor doing the work bought ready-made in pints and the dispenser's contribution being proportion, acid balance and the head on the glass.