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Mandarin Syrup
Claret Wine, 3 pints; Creme de Mandarin, ½ pint; Rock Candy Syrup, 4½ pints. Mix, serve with crushed or shaved ice.
A fountain syrup rather than a drink in itself: a sweet wine cordial meant to be measured by the ounce into a glass of ice and, usually, soda water. The original makes roughly a gallon, which is a dispensing quantity, not a household one.
- Scale it downThe proportions are 6 parts claret to 1 part Creme de Mandarin to 9 parts rock candy syrup. At kitchen scale that is 6 oz claret, 1 oz liqueur, 9 oz syrup, which fills a pint bottle.
- ClaretThe nineteenth-century American trade name for red Bordeaux, and by extension any dry claret-style red. A plain dry Cabernet or Merlot blend is the right register; nothing oaky or high in alcohol, since the sugar will dominate anyway.
- Rock candy syrupNot a flavouring but a very heavy sugar syrup, generally made at something like two parts sugar to one part water by weight and cooked just until clear. Ordinary 1:1 simple syrup will make a noticeably thinner, less stable product.
- Creme de MandarinA sweetened tangerine-peel liqueur of the sort sold in the period; the "creme" indicates high sugar, not dairy. Mandarine Napoleon or a good mandarin or orange curacao stands in for it.
- Serving proportionsFountain practice was about 1 to 1.5 oz of syrup per glass, filled with shaved ice and soda water. Poured neat over ice, as written, it is closer to a heavy cordial.
- AlcoholLow but real. A finished glass carries perhaps the alcohol of a splash of wine, which is presumably why wine-based syrups left American fountains when national Prohibition took effect in January 1920.
- Keeping itSugar at this concentration plus the wine's acid makes the syrup reasonably stable, but bottle it full and keep it cold and dark. The mandarin aroma will fade well before the syrup itself goes off.
Wine syrups sat oddly but comfortably in the American soda fountain, which grew out of the drugstore rather than the bar: the same dispenser who compounded prescriptions kept a rack of flavouring syrups, and a few of them were built on claret, port or sherry with a cordial for perfume. "Claret" itself is the old English trade word for the red wines of Bordeaux, used loosely in American commerce for any dry red, and "rock candy syrup" was one of the fountain's standard sweeteners, said to be prized because a nearly saturated sugar solution resisted fermentation on a warm counter. Formulas of this kind filled the dispensers' manuals, each house differing only in proportion, and a name like Mandarin Syrup told the customer chiefly what the flavouring cordial was. National Prohibition effectively ended the category, and the fountain thereafter leaned on fruit acids, extracts and ice cream instead.