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Ice Cream Soda
Ice cream soda is very popular, and some dealers have increased their business to a remarkable degree by its sale. It has become the backbone of the soda water business, and every dispenser should give it careful attention. By using the best fruit syrups to flavor his soda water, and vanilla ice cream, any dealer can more than double his trade. The ice cream should be kept in a large can packed in ice and placed under the counter within convenient reach. Draw the syrup required, using Cover your ice with thick newspaper, and it will last much longer. less than for ordinary soda, put the ice cream into the tumbler with a large spoon, fill up with fine and coarse stream soda water, and give the customer an ice cream soda water spoon to stir and eat the ice cream with. Use the ice cream liberally. Do not make the mistake of using too small a quantity of ice cream. Use about four ounces to the glass. One of the most successful dispensers of ice cream soda water tells us his ice cream costs 50 cents per gallon. Of course he makes it himself. Experience proves that ice cream soda water at 5 cents per glass pays. The smaller quantity of syrup and soda water used compensates in a measure for the additional expense of ice cream, while the largely increased sale makes it far more profitable in the end. The labor, consumption of ice, and interest on investment in apparatus is but little greater for a large business than for a small one, and the dealers' profits and general business are always increased by a lively soda water trade. The best way to draw ice cream soda is to draw syrup in soda glass, draw fine stream to half fill the glass, which thoroughly mixes the syrup and soda, add ice cream, fill glass with coarse stream, and froth by drawing fine stream down the side of the glass for an instant. For cost and profit of ice cream soda see article on pages 34 and 35.
This is a working dispenser's method rather than a home recipe, but the sequence it describes is exactly right and still produces a better drink than dumping everything in at once.
- The hinge: build it in orderSyrup first, then enough carbonated water from a narrow, forceful stream to half-fill the glass and dissolve the syrup completely, then the ice cream, then the rest of the water. Adding ice cream to undissolved syrup leaves a sweet slug at the bottom and a bland drink above it.
- Fine stream and coarse streamA fountain had two draws: a fine, high-pressure jet for mixing and frothing, and a broad coarse flow for volume. At home, the fine stream is a squirt from a siphon or a hard pour from a bottle of seltzer held close to the glass; the coarse stream is a gentle pour down the side.
- Syrup quantityThe book says only "less than for ordinary soda," and gives no measure. Fountain syrup draws were generally in the neighbourhood of an ounce, so figure roughly 1 ounce, or 2 tablespoons, with the ice cream carrying the rest of the sweetness.
- Four ounces of ice creamRead as volume that is about a half cup, roughly two ordinary scoops; the book does not say what size glass it goes into. The insistence on using it liberally is commercial advice that happens to be correct: skimp and the drink is fizzy syrup water.
- Keeping the ice creamThe can packed in ice under the counter is a pre-refrigeration holding method; the newspaper in the text is for covering the ice itself so it lasts longer, not the can. Cream held this way would be softer than freezer-hard. A freezer works, but ice cream straight from a home freezer at 0F is too hard to float and melt properly; let it sit out five to ten minutes.
- CarbonationFountain water was chilled and carbonated under pressure at the point of draw. Bottled seltzer goes flat quickly once opened, so use a fresh bottle or a home carbonator, keep it very cold, and serve immediately.
- The frothing finishThe last instant of fine stream down the inside of the glass is what raises the head. Aim at the glass wall, not the ice cream, or the foam collapses into a slurry.
- PricesIce cream at 50 cents a gallon and a nickel a glass are period trade figures, quoted here as trade economics, not as anything a modern reader can act on.
The American Soda Book belongs to the great age of the drug-store fountain, when a pharmacist's carbonated water counter could be a substantial part of a store's earnings, and trade manuals like this one taught dispensers both the drinks and the arithmetic behind them. The ice cream soda itself is usually traced to Philadelphia in the 1870s, and traditionally to Robert Green, said to have combined ice cream with flavored soda at the Franklin Institute's semicentennial celebration in 1874 -- a claim repeated for well over a century but never firmly documented. What is certain is that by the time this passage was written the drink had gone from novelty to staple, and the text reads accordingly: it is less concerned with taste than with margin, ice consumption, and the observation that a lively soda trade pulls the rest of the store along with it. The passage notes in passing that its model dispenser makes his own ice cream, at 50 cents a gallon.