Home › At the Fountain › Lemon Sour
Lemon Sour
Simple Syrup, 1 gallon; American Lemon Sour Extract, 4½ ounces; American Fruit Acid, 3 ounces; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce. Every store sells soda nowadays. Competition has taught people to expect pure soda from a fine fountain.
This is a bulk fountain formula, not a single glass: it makes a gallon of flavoring syrup that gets drawn an ounce or two at a time into carbonated water. Nearly every ingredient is a proprietary trade preparation sold by the supply house that printed the book, so the quantities only make sense once you know what was in the bottles.
- Simple syrup, fountain strengthFountain simple syrup was much heavier than the 1:1 bar syrup used today -- made close to saturation, on the order of 13 lb of sugar dissolved per gallon of water. A 1:1 syrup will taste thin and watery drawn at fountain proportions.
- "American" is a brand, not a type"American" here looks to be a house label rather than a generic type: American Lemon Sour Extract, American Fruit Acid and American Soda Foam appear to be proprietary goods from a soda apparatus supplier. Lemon extracts of the period were generally alcoholic solutions of lemon oil; the exact make-up of this one is not recorded.
- Fruit acid"Fruit acid" was a ready-made solution of citric or tartaric acid in water; period formulas commonly run to something like a pound of acid to a pint of water. Three fluid ounces of that per gallon is a plausible sour edge; three ounces of dry citric acid powder per gallon would be considerably sharper, and the original does not say which is meant.
- Soda foamFoam extracts of this period were saponin preparations, most often from quillaia (soapbark), used at fractions of an ounce per gallon to give a head on the drawn drink. Quillaia extract is still a permitted beverage additive but is not a grocery item; a modern fountain would omit it or use egg white or a commercial foamer in a shaken drink.
- Ounces by weight or by measureFountain formulas of this era mixed the two freely. For liquid extracts read fluid ounces; 4½ fl oz of lemon extract per gallon of syrup is in line with contemporary lemon formulas.
- How it was servedDraw 1 to 1½ oz of the finished syrup into a 10 oz glass, add a little cold water to break the syrup, then fill with carbonated water. A gallon yields roughly 85 to 125 drinks.
- KeepingA saturated acidified syrup keeps for weeks cool and covered, but at this acid level it will attack tinned or bare-metal containers. Glass or stainless only.
The soda "sour" borrowed its name straight from the bar: a whiskey or gin sour is spirit, lemon and sugar, and the fountain version kept the lemon and sugar, dropped the liquor, and let carbonated water do the work. Through the late nineteenth century American drugstore fountains built a whole parallel drink list on that principle -- sours, fizzes, flips and cobblers, all alcohol-free -- which is part of why the fountain became the respectable social alternative to the saloon. Books like this one often came out of the soda apparatus and supply trade, with formulas that appear to double as advertising for the extracts named in them: note that the flavor, the acid and the foam are all branded goods from a single house. The closing lines about competition and "pure soda from a fine fountain" are the sales pitch showing through, aimed at a druggist who was no longer the only person in town with a fountain.