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Hot Checkerberry
Draw ½ ounce of wintergreen syrup and 1 ounce of red orange syrup into a mug and fill with hot water. Top with whipped cream. It may also be served by using 1 ounce wintergreen syrup and omitting the orange, but the first is to be preferred. The two syrups may be kept mixed and ready for dispensing.
A hot fountain drink built from two bottled syrups and a kettle. The only real work is sourcing or making the syrups; the assembly is a minute's business.
- What checkerberry isCheckerberry is the New England name for Gaultheria procumbens, the same plant sold elsewhere as teaberry or eastern wintergreen. The drink is flavoured with wintergreen syrup rather than with the berry itself.
- Wintergreen flavouring, carefullySoda syrups of the period were built on oil of wintergreen, which is largely methyl salicylate and genuinely toxic in more than trace amounts. Buy a commercial wintergreen syrup or a food-grade wintergreen extract and follow its dilution, and do not improvise with the essential oil.
- Red orange syrupMost likely an ordinary orange soda syrup coloured red rather than anything made from blood oranges, though the recipe does not say. Any decent orange syrup works; a drop of colouring gets you the fountain's pink-red mug if you want the look.
- Proportions and mug sizeThe 1½ ounces of total syrup here suits a standard fountain mug of roughly 6 to 8 ounces. Scale the syrup, not the water, if you use a larger cup, or the drink comes out thin.
- "Draw" means the pumpFountain syrups were dispensed from measured pumps, commonly delivering about an ounce per stroke. At home, measure with a jigger; a half ounce is one tablespoon.
- Water temperatureThe recipe says only 'hot water'. Very hot rather than hard-boiling is kinder to the volatile wintergreen aroma, which is the point of the drink.
- The toppingWhip the cream to a soft mound and float it on the surface rather than stirring it in. Add it after the mug is filled so it sits.
- Batching the syrupsThe suggestion to keep the two syrups premixed is sound: mix them in the 1:2 wintergreen-to-orange ratio and dispense 1½ ounces per mug. Refrigerate the blend and use it within a couple of weeks.
Soda fountains did steady winter business, and hot drinks served in mugs kept the marble counter earning from November to March. Wintergreen was one of the defining American flavours of the era, running through root beer, birch beer, chewing gum and tooth powder alike; New Englanders knew the plant as checkerberry and chewed its leaves and berries. Pairing it with orange syrup is a dispenser's trick rather than a botanical one, softening the medicinal edge of the wintergreen with sweetness and acid, and the note that the two syrups may be kept premixed points to a book written for someone working at speed behind a counter rather than for a cook.