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Lime Slip
One-half ounce lime juice, 2 ounces pineapple syrup, 2 thin slices orange, coarse stream soda. Serve in large glass.
A fountain formula written for someone standing at a marble counter with a syrup rail and a two-stream draft arm. Translated to a home kitchen it is a short, sharp pineapple-lime soda that takes under a minute.
- The measuresHalf an ounce of lime juice is one tablespoon; two ounces of pineapple syrup is a quarter cup. Add the juice and syrup to the empty glass first and stir them together before any water goes in, or the syrup sits in a slug at the bottom.
- "Coarse stream soda"Fountain draught arms typically offered more than one outlet, among them a fine stream for delicate mixing and a coarse stream that delivered a thick, fast column of carbonated water to agitate the syrup and raise a head. At home, pour cold seltzer or club soda hard down the centre of the glass from a few inches up. Do not stir afterwards.
- Pineapple syrupFountain pineapple syrup was a heavy simple syrup, roughly two parts sugar to one part water, flavoured with pineapple juice or an extract. Modern snow-cone or Italian-soda pineapple syrups are the closest commercial match; canned pineapple juice alone is far too thin and will give a watery drink.
- Large glassThe book does not give a capacity. If you take a large fountain glass as somewhere around 12 ounces, that leaves roughly 9 to 10 ounces of soda water over the 2½ ounces of syrup and juice. One serving.
- The orange slicesThey work mainly as garnish and aroma rather than as the drink's flavour. Cut them thin enough to be translucent; dropping them in before the soda lets the bubbles carry the oil from the peel upward.
- TemperatureFountain soda water was drawn cold and the glass with it. Chill the seltzer and the glass; ice is not called for here and dilutes the drink as it melts.
Books like this one were printed for the working dispenser, in a period when the drugstore fountain was a principal place Americans drank carbonated beverages, and the syrup rail carried fruit flavours by the dozen: pineapple, orange, raspberry, cherry, vanilla. A drink of this kind is essentially a syrup-and-acid soda built in the glass, with citrus juice supplying the tartness that a phosphate would have taken from acid phosphate solution. The pineapple syrup here is doing double duty as sweetener and body, which is why so little liquid produces a drink that fills the glass.