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Hurculine Syrup
Extract orange, 2 ounces; extract vanilla, 2 ounces; liquid phosphate, 2 ounces; tasteless tincture of iron, 4 ounces; simple syrup, 7½ pints; sugar coloring, 30 drops. Mix and strain.
This is a druggist's formula rather than a kitchen one, and the reason it cannot be made today lies in two of its six ingredients. The notes below explain what the components were and why the finished syrup should not be mixed or drunk.
- Tasteless tincture of iron is a medicine, not a flavouringThe phrase covers a group of nineteenth-century pharmacy preparations built on iron salts, prepared or modified so that the metallic taste was suppressed. Four ounces of such a preparation in a batch of syrup delivers a medicinal quantity of iron by the glassful, and the strength varies with whichever formulary the tincture was made to.
- Iron overdose is the specific hazardIron has long been among the leading causes of accidental poisoning in children, and the toxic dose is not far above the therapeutic one. A fountain syrup drawn by the ounce, repeatedly, from a batch of uncertain iron concentration has no safe serving size that can be worked out after the fact.
- Liquid phosphateThe sour note behind the whole family of drinks called phosphates; at the fountain this generally meant an acid phosphate solution based on phosphoric acid. Food-grade phosphoric acid still exists and is used in colas, but the pharmacy article was sold at compounding strengths rather than as a consumer ingredient.
- Extracts were far stronger than modern equivalentsExtracts -- Two ounces each of orange and vanilla extract per 7½ pints was a trade-scale proportion using fountain suppliers' extracts, whose strength cannot be assumed to match a supermarket bottle. Do not read the ratio as a reliable guide for modern extracts.
- Sugar coloringThirty drops of caramel colour, made by cooking sugar to the point of darkening. It is purely cosmetic here, giving the syrup a brownish tint.
- Simple syrup and yieldFountain simple syrup of the period ran heavier than modern bar syrup, often close to two parts sugar to one of water by weight. The batch is 7½ pints of syrup plus about 10 fluid ounces of additives, so roughly a gallon of finished stock — well over a hundred servings at the usual ounce or so per glass.
- If you want a phosphateUse a current recipe from a source that specifies food-grade acid phosphate and gives quantities per glass. Do not adapt this one by leaving the iron out; the rest of the formula is a period flavour sketch, not a tested drink.
The American soda fountain grew directly out of the drugstore, and formulas like this one sat on the same shelf as cough syrups because the line between refreshment and medication was barely drawn. Iron tonics were among the most heavily promoted remedies of the late nineteenth century, sold against "debility," "nervous exhaustion" and the anaemia then thought to afflict overworked clerks and pale young women; a dispenser who could offer the same iron in a cold, sweet, fizzing glass had an obvious commercial advantage. The name is transparent marketing by way of a druggist's spelling — and belongs to the same family as the Kola, Celery and Beef-and-Iron syrups that fill fountain manuals of the era. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 and its successors would impose labelling and, eventually, meaningful limits on what could be sold as a beverage, which helps explain why a compounding-strength iron preparation can appear here with no more comment than the vanilla.