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Lime Juice and Pepsin
American Lime Juice and Pepsin, 1 quart; Simple Syrup, 3 quarts. A delicious beverage and wholesome aid to digestion. Free from phosphoric acid, medicinal strength, I5 grains saccharated pepsin to each glass. , medicinal strength, 15 grains saccharated pepsin to each glass. Use 1½ ounces syrup in an 8-ounce tumbler.
This is a fountain dispenser's formula rather than a home recipe: a proprietary flavouring base cut with simple syrup, then drawn with carbonated water to order. Most of the work of translating it is figuring out what the base was and what the ratios mean.
- What the base was"American Lime Juice and Pepsin" reads as the name of a bottled trade preparation supplied to fountains rather than something compounded at the counter, though the book does not say so outright. To reproduce it you would need lime juice, sugar, and saccharated pepsin, which is pepsin cut with milk sugar to a standard activity.
- Pepsin todaySaccharated pepsin is a digestive enzyme, usually obtained from the stomach lining of pigs. It is still sold as a supplement, so a version of this drink is possible, but it is not a vegetarian ingredient and it has no flavour role whatever -- it is there entirely for the health claim.
- The suspicious measurement"Use ½ ounces syrup in an 8-ounce tumbler" looks like a typesetting loss of a leading numeral, the plural "ounces" after a bare fraction being the clue; fountain practice of the period was commonly around 1 to 1½ fluid ounces of syrup per 8-ounce glass, topped with carbonated water.
- Dosing does not survive dilution mathFifteen grains of pepsin per glass is roughly one gram. The copy claims that figure for each glass served, but with the strength of the original bottle never stated, there is no way to check it against the one-quart-to-three-quarts dilution.
- The 4:1 dilutionOne quart of base to three quarts of simple syrup gives one gallon of dispensing syrup.
- "Free from phosphoric acid"This is a competitive dig, not a nutrition note. Acid phosphate was the standard fountain souring agent of the era, and this product advertised that its tartness came from lime juice alone.
- YieldA gallon of finished syrup at 1½ ounces per glass gives about 85 drinks, which tells you plainly this was written for a shop rather than a household.
American soda fountains grew directly out of the drugstore, and for decades their syrups carried the vocabulary of the dispensary along with the sugar. Pepsin, isolated in the 1830s and commercialised as a digestive remedy later in the century, turned up in fountain syrups, lozenges and chewing gum on the strength of the widespread Victorian conviction that dyspepsia was the national complaint; the same enthusiasm is generally credited with giving Pepsi-Cola its name in 1898. Formulas like this one sit exactly on the line between medicine and refreshment: the copy promises a "wholesome aid to digestion" and quotes a dose in grains, while the instruction that follows is pure counter work — measure the syrup, pull the carbonated water, serve. The pointed claim of freedom from phosphoric acid marks it as a product competing in a crowded market, where acid phosphate was so standard that its absence was worth advertising.