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Hot Creme de Menthe
One ounce creme de menthe syrup. Fill mug with hot water. Top with a spoonful of whipped cream. Sprinkle with grated nutmeg.
A one-minute fountain drink whose only real variable is the syrup. Everything depends on using a mint syrup rather than the liqueur of the same name.
- Crème de menthe syrup is not the liqueurAt a soda fountain this meant a sweetened, alcohol-free green mint syrup, sold by the gallon for sodas and sundaes. Substituting the bottled liqueur gives a thin, boozy drink; use a peppermint or mint simple syrup instead, or steep crushed mint in hot sugar syrup and add a drop of green colouring if you want the period look.
- One ounceTwo tablespoons. The recipe does not give a mug size; a mug of roughly 8 to 10 ounces suits the proportion. Fountain syrups were generally sweet and concentrated, so taste and go up to an ounce and a half if the drink reads thin.
- Water temperatureHot rather than hard-boiling; fountains typically drew hot water from a standing urn. Water just off the boil is enough, and gives the cream a moment before it collapses.
- The whipped creamThe recipe specifies only a spoonful. Cream whipped to soft peaks floats and melts in gradually rather than sitting as a stiff cap; leaving it unsweetened keeps the drink from doubling up on the syrup's sugar.
- NutmegGrate it over the cream at the table. Pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of its aromatic oil and will simply look like dust here.
- YieldOne mug. Scale by multiplying the ounce of syrup per serving; there is nothing to batch except the water.
Soda fountains were built for summer, and the trade problem every proprietor faced was what to sell in January. The answer, from the 1890s through the 1920s, was a parallel hot menu run off the same syrup rail: hot chocolate, hot lemonade, beef tea, hot ginger, and drinks like this one, in which a stock syrup meant for carbonated water was simply diluted with hot water instead of cold. Cr ied its place on that rail because mint was already a fountain staple. The name was borrowed from the French liqueur.