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Hot Cherry Phosphate
Prepare a syrup with 12 ounces of cherry juice, 1½ pounds of sugar and 6 ounces water. Dissolve the sugar in the juice and water. In serving, put ½ ounces of the mixture in the mug and add i dram of acid phosphates solution, filling the mug with hot water. If desired, the phosphate may be kept mixed with the syrup.
A hot soda-fountain drink from the era when the fountain sold winter beverages as briskly as cold ones. The syrup keeps for weeks refrigerated, and the acid phosphate is the whole point of the flavour.
- Acid phosphateThis is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a souring agent that gives tartness without the fruitiness of citric or the sharpness of lemon. It is still made for the cocktail and soda trade under the Horsford name and has no substitute that tastes the same; lemon juice will give acidity but not the dry, mineral bite.
- A dramA fluid dram is 1/8 fluid ounce, about 3.7 ml, or roughly three-quarters of a teaspoon. A dram is a common dose of phosphate in fountain formulas of the period.
- Syrup proportionsThe sugar quantity in this printing is unclear, reading as either one or one and a half pounds. Either amount, with the 12 ounces of juice and 6 ounces of water, gives a heavy fountain syrup.
- Syrup per mugThe serving measure appears to have lost its whole number; one to one and a half fluid ounces of syrup to a 6-8 ounce mug is in line with other fountain formulas. Start at one ounce, taste, and adjust, since juice sweetness varies.
- Cherry juiceFountain cherry syrups of the period were often made from sour cherries rather than the sweet dark cherry of modern juice blends. Unsweetened Montmorency juice is a close match and makes the phosphate read as balance rather than sourness.
- Do not boil the syrupThe recipe calls only for the sugar to be dissolved in the juice and water; no cooking is specified. Boiling would drive off volatile cherry aroma and darken the syrup.
- YieldThe syrup as written makes roughly a quart, enough for about twenty mugs at 1 1/2 ounces each. Refrigerate in a clean bottle and use within a month.
Acid phosphate arrived at the American soda fountain by way of medicine. Horsford's Acid Phosphate was marketed from the 1870s as a nerve tonic and a remedy for dyspepsia, and druggists who dispensed it soon discovered it made an excellent souring agent for the sweet syrups on the same counter. Phosphates became a fountain category in their own right, sitting beside the egg drinks and the plain sodas. Hot service like this one belongs to the winter half of the fountain year: soda water was a summer trade, so fountains kept a hot-water tap and a list of hot phosphates, hot lemonades and beef teas to hold customers through the cold months. The mug rather than the glass is the tell.