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Ladies' Cocktail
Mixing glass half full cracked ice, 2 ounces cherry syrup, 1 dash lemon juice, 1 teaspoonful brandy, fill with plain water. Strain into cocktail glass and add maraschino cherry.
A fountain drink dressed as a cocktail: sweet, cold, barely alcoholic. The proportions only work if the ice does its job, so treat the shake as the actual step rather than a formality.
- Cherry syrupThis means fountain syrup — a heavy sugar syrup flavored with cherry, roughly the consistency of grenadine, not cherry juice or preserved-cherry liquid. Two ounces of a modern cherry soda syrup or a homemade 2:1 sugar syrup steeped with sour cherries is the right register; anything thinner will taste watery once shaken.
- "Plain water"At a soda fountain the taps ran carbonated water and plain water side by side, and "plain" specifies the still tap. Since the drink is strained rather than served over ice, carbonation would be largely lost anyway.
- Fill withThe mixing glass is filled to the top over the ice, so the water is the largest component by volume: several ounces, depending on the size of glass used. Strained off the ice, the finished drink is a few ounces of sweet, barely alcoholic liquid.
- Cracked iceCracked, not cubed: irregular shards chill and dilute fast. Stir briskly until the outside of the glass frosts, then strain immediately.
- A dash of lemonAbout 1/8 teaspoon. It exists to cut two ounces of syrup, and the drink is cloying without it; a scant 1/4 teaspoon is closer to modern taste.
- One teaspoonful of brandyRoughly 5 ml, so under 2 percent alcohol by volume in the finished glass — a flavoring, not a spirit measure. Use a plain grape brandy or Cognac; anything heavily oaked overwhelms the cherry at this ratio.
- The cherryA period maraschino cherry was preserved in maraschino liqueur, not the bright red corn-syrup kind. A cocktail cherry packed in its own syrup gets much nearer the original.
Soda fountains sold "cocktails" that were mostly a piece of theater. Where temperance sentiment kept towns or particular establishments dry, the dispenser could still offer the ritual — the mixing glass, the cracked ice, the strain into a stemmed glass, the skewered cherry — with a teaspoon of brandy standing in for the ounce or two of spirit a bar would have poured. The name marks the intended customer: "ladies'" signaled sweet, pale, small and decorative. Brandy also had a long career as a medicinal ingredient at the fountain, where druggists dispensed soda alongside prescriptions, so a spoonful in a glass sat comfortably on the counter of a shop that was equal parts pharmacy and refreshment stand.