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Hot Tom (Mix ounce each fluid extract) (II)
Mix 1 ounce each fluid extract gentian, caramel solution, soluble extract ginger, soluble extract capsicum, soluble extract orange, soda foam, tartaric acid, 1 quart simple syrup. Mix well; pour 11½ fluid ounces into glass, fill with hot water, and serve with a spoon.
This is a fountain formula: you compound a flavoring syrup in bulk, then draw off a measured dose per glass and top it with hot water. Read the dispensing quantity carefully before you scale anything.
- The 11½ ounces is almost certainly a misprintThe 11½ ounces looks like a misprint -- a quart of syrup plus 7 ounces of extract yields about 39 fluid ounces; at 11½ ounces per glass the batch makes barely three drinks, and each would be nearly pure bitter syrup in a glass that also has to hold hot water. A dose of 1½ fluid ounces would be more consistent with the size of the batch, and would give roughly two dozen servings.
- Fluid extract of gentianA pharmacy preparation of gentian root in dilute alcohol, intensely bitter and the backbone of the drink's tonic character. Sold today mainly as a herbal tincture; bitters formulated for cocktails are the nearest thing on a shelf, but they are not interchangeable ounce for ounce.
- "Soluble extract" means water-miscibleSoluble extracts of ginger, capsicum and orange were made so they would disperse in syrup without clouding or separating. Substituting an oil-based flavoring or an oleoresin will give you a slick on the surface and wildly different strength.
- Capsicum is the variable to watchAn ounce of soluble capsicum extract in a quart of syrup is meant to register as warmth at the back of the throat, not heat on the tongue. Strengths of modern capsicum preparations vary enormously, so add it last and by drops against a measured sample rather than by the ounce.
- Soda foamA fountain head-producing solution, traditionally based on saponin from quillaia (soap bark), sometimes with licorice. Quillaia extract is still permitted as a beverage foaming agent at controlled levels, though the old bulk fountain product is hard to come by; omitting it costs you the head and nothing else.
- Caramel solution is color, not flavorThis is burnt-sugar coloring used to give the drink a brown look. Caramel color or a dark homemade caramel syrup does the same job.
- Tartaric acidAn ounce per quart is a sharp dose; it supplies the tartness that keeps gentian and ginger from tasting flat. Citric acid behaves similarly if tartaric is not to hand, though it reads slightly less brisk.
- Water temperature and serviceFountain hot water was drawn hot from an urn. Poured over cold syrup in a heavy glass it lands at drinking temperature; use a mug or preheated tempered glass rather than a thin tumbler. The spoon is presumably for stirring the settled syrup up from the bottom.
Drugstore fountains lived on cold drinks in July and needed something to sell in January, so the trade developed a line of hot dispensed beverages: hot lemonade, hot malted milk, beef tea, and imitations of the winter bar drinks. "Hot Tom" is generally taken to echo the Tom and Jerry, the eggy hot spirit punch that was a saloon fixture through the nineteenth century, and reproduces something of its effect - sweet, spicy, warming - with no alcohol beyond the trace carried in the fluid extracts. The bitter-and-pungent combination of gentian, ginger and capsicum shows the fountain's pharmacy parentage: all three were stock tonic and stomachic ingredients on the dispensing shelf. Formula books of the era often print several numbered variants of a popular drink side by side, which is the likeliest reason this one is labeled II.