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Lime Fruit and Ginger
This may be prepared as a syrup by adding 8 ounces of lime juice to 1 gallon of ginger syrup, or you can serve it by adding the lime juice when serving. Serve solid and in an 8-ounce glass. Use a sponge on the counter rather than towels.
A fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: it assumes a barrel of ginger syrup on hand and a carbonated water draft arm at the counter. Both parts translate easily to a home batch.
- The ratio is what matters8 fluid ounces of lime juice to 1 gallon (128 fl oz) of ginger syrup is 1 part lime to 16 parts syrup. To make a workable quantity, use 1 fluid ounce (2 tablespoons) lime juice per 2 cups ginger syrup.
- "Serve solid"Most likely fountain shorthand for drawing the carbonated water through the coarse or heavy stream rather than the fine spray, so the glass fills with liquid instead of foam. The book does not explain the term.
- An 8-ounce glassStandard fountain practice was 1 to 1.5 fl oz of syrup in an 8 oz glass, the rest carbonated water. Start at 1 oz and adjust, since ginger syrups vary widely in strength.
- Ginger syrupThe book means a sweetened ginger extract syrup, not a thin ginger tea. A modern equivalent: simmer 4 oz sliced fresh ginger in 2 cups water, strain, and dissolve 2 cups sugar into it while hot. Homemade will be less fierce than the old commercial extracts.
- What kind of lime juiceTrade "lime juice" of the period was often a bottled, preserved, sometimes sweetened product that kept for months, where fresh juice does not. That may be part of why the book offers the second method.
- Add the lime at servingThe alternative given is probably the better one at home. Fresh lime juice stirred into a gallon of syrup can dull and turn slightly bitter on standing; keep the ginger syrup plain and measure the lime into each glass.
- The sponge lineNot part of the drink. It is counter procedure, on the grounds that a damp towel wiped across a counter all day spreads more than it removes. The book gives no reason for it.
The American soda fountain worked from a shelf of syrups, and books like this one existed to standardize them across drugstore counters. Ginger was a long-established fountain flavor, carried over from ginger beer and ginger ale, and the pairing with lime follows the same logic as the imported lime cordials then sold for mixing: sharp acid to cut a sweet, warm syrup. Drugstore fountains are generally said to have flourished during Prohibition, when they picked up trade that had belonged to saloons, and the brisk, procedural tone here, down to the instruction about sponges, reflects a business being run to a standard rather than a cook improvising at home.