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Hot Limetta
One ounce lime juice, ½ ounce strawberry juice and 1 spoonful of sugar. Fill up with hot water, stirring well.
A hot limeade in fountain shorthand: two liquids, sugar, hot water. The proportions are for a small mug, and the only real question is what the original meant by "juice."
- The measuresOunces here are fluid ounces, so 1 oz lime juice is 2 tablespoons and ½ oz strawberry is 1 tablespoon. The recipe does not say what it is filling up; the proportions suit a mug or hot-drink glass of roughly 6 to 8 oz.
- "Spoonful" is a bar spoon"Spoonful" -- Unspecified in the original; a bar spoon, close to a modern teaspoon, is the likely reading behind a fountain counter. With an ounce of straight lime juice in the glass many will want two.
- Strawberry juice, not syrupFountain manuals distinguished fruit juices from the much sweeter fruit syrups. If you substitute bottled strawberry syrup, cut the added sugar entirely and taste before adding more.
- Water temperatureThe recipe says only "hot water." Fountains generally had a hot-water tap or urn on hand; water off a full rolling boil will knock back the lime's aroma, so let it stand a moment.
- Lime juice keepingLime juice -- The recipe does not say whether the juice is fresh or bottled; a fountain would most likely have had bottled juice to hand, which is duller than fresh. Fresh-squeezed gives a sharper drink.
- YieldOne serving. Scaling for a group works, but add the lime juice to each mug rather than holding the mixed drink hot, which dulls the citrus.
Soda fountains were seasonal businesses, and hot drinks were how they earned money between November and March; a fountain's hot-water tap and its "winter menu" of hot lemonade, hot chocolate, beef tea and clam bouillon kept the marble counter busy when nobody wanted ice cream. "Limetta" is a botanical and commercial name for the sweet lime, Citrus limetta, though what a given fountain card meant by it is not clear. Hot citrus drinks of this kind sat on the line between refreshment and remedy, and were commonly recommended for colds and chills, an association the druggist-proprietors often associated with early fountains were happy to encourage.