Home › At the Fountain › Kola Fizz
Kola Fizz
Prepare syrup of 2 drams fluid extract kola, 8 ounces grape juice, 6 ounces pineapple syrup, 1½ ounces solution citric acid, 14½ ounces syrup. Serve solid. Be lavish in every direction except as to quantity; use a thin and dainty glass, but have it moderately small.
A fountain formula: you build a bottle of flavoring syrup, then dispense it by the glass with carbonated water. Everything here is in apothecary measure, since the man mixing it was a druggist.
- The measuresAll quantities are fluid: a fluid dram is about 3.7 mL, so 2 drams of kola extract is a quarter of a fluid ounce, about 7.4 mL. The finished syrup comes to a little over 29 fluid ounces, a little under a quart.
- "Serve solid"Apparently fountain shorthand for how the carbonated water is drawn: fountain directions of the period distinguish a coarse, solid stream from the fine spray used for smooth sodas, and this seems to call for the former.
- Fluid extract of kolaA pharmacy preparation of kola nut, the West African seed that supplies caffeine and tannin; it was a drug-shelf item, not a grocery item today. Food-grade kola nut extracts still exist through flavor suppliers, but strengths differ wildly from the old USP fluid extract, so no direct swap can be given.
- "Syrup"Plain fountain syrup, which was much heavier than a modern 1:1 simple syrup — on the order of two parts sugar to one of water by weight. Using a thin simple syrup will give a watery, under-sweet drink.
- Solution of citric acidA pharmacist's stock acid solution; conventional strengths were given in the manuals but were not uniform, so the ½ ounce here is not a precise instruction. Safest to treat the acid as a corrective added to taste at the end.
- Pineapple syrupAnother fountain stock item: pineapple juice cooked down with sugar syrup, not the thin canned juice. Sweetened crushed-pineapple syrup, or juice reduced with an equal weight of sugar, is the closest equivalent.
- Grape juiceThe recipe does not specify a variety; bottled grape juice was a comparatively new commercial product at this date and works here as written.
- Yield and pouringFigure 1 to 1½ ounces of syrup per glass topped with about 6 ounces of soda water, which gives roughly twenty drinks from the batch. The instruction about the small, thin glass is a serving note, not a garnish: the drink is meant to be strong and short.
Kola drinks were the great fountain fashion of the two decades either side of 1900, when caffeine-bearing kola nut — the seed of Cola nitida and Cola acuminata, chewed as a stimulant across West Africa and imported through the drug trade — was marketed in America as a nerve tonic and headache cure. Because the soda fountain sat inside the drugstore, the man dispensing the drink was the same man compounding prescriptions, which is why the formula reads in drams and calls for a fluid extract and an acid solution off the pharmacy shelf. Alongside the branded kola colas, druggists made fountain versions of their own, and books of this kind printed dozens of them. The recipe closes with the advice to be lavish in everything but quantity, and to use a small dainty glass.