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Hyacintha
One-half ounce American Saffron, ¼ ounce juniper berries, ¼ ounce dates, ¼ ounce raisins, 15 grains aniseseed, 15 grains cinnamon, 8 grains coriander, 8 grains mace, 8 grains cloves, 19 ounces diluted alcohol. Reduce the solids, add diluted alcohol, macerate 6 days, agitating occasionally, and filter. Use the resultant tincture for flavoring syrup, which is then to be served solid like the phosphates.
This is a pharmacist's flavoring tincture rather than a drink in itself: a macerated botanical extract to be stirred into simple syrup and then drawn at the fountain. Nearly every term in it belongs to the drugstore rather than the kitchen.
- American saffron is not saffronThe trade name refers to safflower petals (Carthamus tinctorius), sold cheaply by the ounce as a saffron substitute. It gives a yellow-orange colour and a faint hay-like flavour, nothing like the crocus stigmas, and half an ounce of true saffron would be both ruinous and overwhelming here.
- Diluted alcoholIn the pharmacopoeia of the period this is a defined article: roughly equal volumes of 95 percent grain alcohol and water, landing near 49 percent by volume. A neutral grain spirit cut with distilled water to about the same strength is the equivalent; the strength matters because it governs what dissolves out of the resins and the dried fruit.
- Grains and ouncesA grain is about 65 mg, so 15 grains of aniseed is just under a gram and 8 grains of cloves about half a gram. The 19 ounces of diluted alcohol is most likely a fluid measure, a little over a pint, while the botanicals are weighed.
- Reduce the solidsThis means bruise and grind everything to a coarse powder before the spirit goes on. Juniper berries should be crushed rather than pulverised, and the dates and raisins chopped small; whole fruit will simply sit in the jar and give up very little.
- Maceration and filteringSix days in a stoppered jar at room temperature, shaken once or twice a day, out of direct light. The sugars from the dates and raisins will blind a paper filter quickly, so decant the clear liquid first and press the marc separately.
- No proportion is given for the syrupThe book assumes a dispenser who knows his own hand. Since no quantity is recorded, add the tincture to plain syrup a little at a time and judge by taste, since the juniper and clove come forward as the syrup sits.
- Served solid, like the phosphatesFountain jargon: 'solid' appears to describe how the glass is drawn, with a heavy, coarse stream of carbonated water rather than the fine spray, giving a denser, less foamy drink. Whether the comparison with phosphates also implies acid phosphate in the glass is not stated.
- Yield and alcoholThe tincture makes something over a pint, enough to flavour a good deal of syrup, and being alcoholic it should keep well. The spirit carried into any single glass is negligible.
American soda fountains were run by druggists, and formula books like this one read accordingly: weights in grains, spirits specified by pharmacopoeial standard, and flavourings built as tinctures because a druggist already had the jars, the filter papers and the alcohol. The name Hyacintha evokes a scent rather than describing the contents; there is no hyacinth in it, and the actual flavour is a warm spice-and-juniper blend coloured yellow by safflower. Safflower under the name American or bastard saffron had been a standard cheap substitute in both dyeing and dispensing for generations, and its appearance here is a reminder of how much of the early fountain repertoire came out of the dispensary shelf rather than the kitchen. Phosphates, mentioned at the close, were the house style of the period: syrup, a dash of acid phosphate for tartness, and carbonated water drawn heavy.