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Lemonade Soda or Seltzer
Lemon, juice of Cracked Ice, ½ tumblerful; Powdered Sugar, 1 tablespoonful. Shake thoroughly, then add seltzer water or plain soda to fill glass. Top with slice of lemon and a maraschino cherry, and serve with a straw.
A fountain lemonade rather than a pitcher one: built to order, shaken cold, then charged with soda at the last moment. Two words in the ingredient list mean something different now than they did behind a marble counter.
- "Powdered sugar" means fine granulatedIn fountain manuals of this era powdered sugar is finely milled cane sugar, not the modern confectioners' sugar cut with cornstarch. Use superfine or caster sugar; modern powdered sugar will leave the drink faintly cloudy and starchy. Simple syrup works as well and dissolves instantly, but you need about two tablespoons of 1:1 syrup to match a tablespoon of dry sugar.
- How much lemonThe original just says "juice of" and leaves the number to the dispenser. One medium lemon, roughly 2 tablespoons, suits an 8-ounce glass; use two if you want it sharper.
- Tumbler and iceSoda tumblers of the period ran to roughly 8 to 10 ounces, so half a tumblerful of cracked ice is about 4 to 5 ounces by volume. Cracked rather than cubed ice chills and dilutes faster during the shake.
- Shake, then chargeThe shaking is done before the soda goes in. Shaking a carbonated drink drives off the gas and, in a sealed shaker, builds dangerous pressure. Shake juice, sugar and ice, then top with seltzer.
- Seltzer versus plain sodaThe recipe treats the two as interchangeable. Fountain soda was water charged under pressure with carbon dioxide. Chill the bottle thoroughly and pour down the side of the glass to keep the fizz.
- YieldOne glass. Fountain drinks were mixed to order, which is why the quantities are given per drink rather than per batch.
The soda fountain was, for a long stretch of American life, a pharmacy fixture: carbonated water was first sold as a health tonic, and the dispenser stood behind a counter alongside the prescription desk. Lemonade soda is the plainest thing in the fountain repertoire, and it survived the era's fashion for elaborate phosphates and egg drinks, needing nothing but lemons, sugar and gas. The maraschino cherry and the straw are period signatures rather than flavorings: the paper straw came into commercial use in the late nineteenth century, and candied cherries in syrup were a cheap way to make a five-cent glass look like something ordered.