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Hot Raspberry
Prepare a syrup as follows: Six ounces raspberry juice and enough plain , put ½ ounces in an 8-ounce mug, and syrup to make 32 ounces. To serve, put 1½ ounces in an 8-ounce mug, fill the latter with hot water
A soda-fountain formula in two stages: build a bottle of raspberry syrup, then dilute it by the mugful with hot water. The printed text has a typesetting slip that repeats part of the serving line, but the working numbers are clear enough.
- The garbled lineThe phrase "put ½ ounces in an 8-ounce mug, and" is a compositor's error duplicating the serving instruction further on. Read the syrup as raspberry juice plus plain syrup to make 32 ounces total, and the serving dose as 1½ ounces per mug.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesThe measures here read as fluid measure. Six fluid ounces of raspberry juice is 3/4 cup; 32 ounces is one quart of finished syrup; 1½ ounces is 3 tablespoons.
- Plain syrupThe "plain syrup" or simple syrup at the fountain was a heavy syrup, commonly given as something in the region of equal weights of sugar and water, dissolved without browning, and sometimes with a little acid added to discourage crystallising. A modern 1:1 by weight syrup is a reasonable substitute.
- Raspberry juiceStrained juice from crushed fresh or frozen raspberries, not a raspberry cordial or a bottled drink already sweetened. Anything pre-sweetened will throw the syrup out of balance, since all the sugar here comes from the plain syrup.
- Water temperatureThe fountain drew from a hot-water tap held below boiling. Water just off the boil is fine; water at a full rolling boil dulls fresh raspberry aroma noticeably.
- Strength and yieldA quart of syrup makes about twenty-one mugs at 1½ ounces each. Taste one mug and increase the dose if it reads thin to you.
- Keeping the syrupFresh fruit juice in syrup is perishable in a way that a plain sugar syrup is not. Refrigerate it and use within a week or two.
- ServingAn 8-ounce mug, preheated with hot water and emptied, holds the heat long enough to matter.
Soda fountains were a year-round business, and the trade press pushed hot dispensing hard as a way to keep the marble counter earning through the winter. Hot fruit drinks, hot beef tea, hot malted milk and hot chocolate all appeared alongside the cold sodas, drawn from a heated water tap and served in thick china mugs rather than glasses. A hot raspberry belonged to that winter list, and it carried a faint medicinal association as well: raspberry syrup and raspberry vinegar had long been household remedies for a sore throat or a feverish chill, so a hot raspberry sat comfortably in a shop that was still half pharmacy. Formulas of this kind were written for the dispenser, not the home cook, which is why they specify a quart of stock syrup and a per-mug dose rather than a number of servings.