Home › At the Fountain › Hot Chocolate Sundae
Hot Chocolate Sundae
Hot, rich chocolate syrup poured over a ladle of plain or nut ice cream is very delicious. A few chopped nuts may be sprinkled over the top.
A fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: it assumes you already have a jar of chocolate syrup on the steam table and a tub of ice cream in the well. The whole thing turns on temperature contrast.
- The syrup is the recipeThe book leaves the syrup to be supplied from elsewhere: fountain work of this era generally relied on a chocolate syrup made up in advance and kept warm at the counter. If your book has a chocolate syrup formula elsewhere, that is the one intended here; otherwise a cocoa-and-sugar syrup simmered a few minutes and held hot will do. "Rich" implies a high proportion of cocoa and sugar to water, thick enough to coat rather than run off.
- A ladleA fountain ladle or dipper of this kind holds only a couple of fluid ounces: a single generous ball, not a bowlful.
- Hot means hot, not boilingSyrup held near a simmer will melt the ice cream into soup before it reaches the table. Hot to the touch rather than scalding is enough to read as hot against the cold cream.
- Serve it in glass, and warm the glass firstSundaes of this period were generally served in tulip or footed sundae glasses. A chilled glass straight from the case is more liable to crack under hot syrup, so a glass at room temperature, or briefly rinsed warm, is safer.
- "Nut ice cream"This may mean either vanilla with chopped nuts folded through — walnut, pecan or almond — or a nut-flavoured cream such as burnt almond; the recipe does not specify. Plain vanilla with nuts scattered over the top gives much the same effect.
- Toast the nutsThe nuts go on last -- The recipe sprinkles the chopped nuts over the top at the end, which keeps them crisp under the syrup. If you toast them first, do it lightly and let them cool.
- TimingAssemble and serve immediately; the contrast is lost within moments. Syrup first over the scoop, nuts after, no standing about.
The hot fudge and hot chocolate sundae belong to the American soda fountain's answer to a problem it created for itself: by the 1890s the fountain was a year-round business, and a shop selling nothing but cold sodas and ices had a thin winter. Hot syrups, hot malted milk and hot bouillon were all pressed into service to keep customers coming in through January. The sundae itself is generally traced to the 1880s or 1890s, with several towns — Evanston, Two Rivers, Ithaca and others — claiming its invention, and the usual explanation offered is that local Sunday restrictions on soda water pushed dispensers toward ice cream with syrup instead; the story is traditional and the documentary evidence is thin. What is clear from books like this one is how formulaic the trade had become: the dispenser was not expected to cook, only to combine standing syrups, ice creams and garnishes in named permutations, which is why an entry like this one can be three sentences long and still count as a complete instruction.