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Mead, New Orleans
Tonka Beans, 2 ounces; Cloves, 7; Cinnamon, 7; Ginger, 7; Nutmeg, 7; Mace, 2; Simple Syrup, 20 gallons. Spices to be bruised in a mortar; those containing the most oil should be placed in a bag by themselves, and the others in another bag. Immerse all in the syrup, and boil from 12 to 24 hours, the longer, the better. Take 2 pounds of sassafras bark, add 3 gallons of water, and boil slowly until reduced to 2 gallons; 8 ounces allspice may be added to advantage. After spices are sufficiently boiled, add the sassafras liquor and 2 gallons of honey. Put 5 quarts in a suitable fountain, add water to make 10 gallons, and charge to 100 pounds' pressure. We recommend the use of American Concentrated Syrups, as they require no compounding, except dilution with simple syrup. The best formulas for their use will be found under the proper headings.
A commercial soda-fountain syrup, built in twenty-gallon batches for a druggist's back room. Two of its three defining flavours are substances that can no longer legally be added to food in the United States, and the rest of the formula is written in a shorthand aimed at a trade reader.
- Tonka beansThe bean of Dipteryx odorata is loaded with coumarin, which is hepatotoxic in quantity. The FDA prohibited tonka and added coumarin in food in 1954, and two ounces steeped for up to twenty-four hours is an aggressive extraction, not a trace. This alone puts the syrup out of reach.
- Sassafras barkTwo pounds of bark reduced into two gallons of decoction is a concentrated source of safrole, banned as a food additive in 1960 after it was shown to cause liver tumours in rodents. Commercial root beer has used safrole-free sassafras extract ever since; whole bark boiled at home is not the same material.
- The numbers are unstated"Cloves, 7; Cinnamon, 7" gives no unit. It may be ounces, carried down from the preceding line, or drams; the text does not say. A formula whose quantities have to be guessed at is not a formula you can follow.
- ScaleThe batch yields something over twenty gallons of finished syrup, dosed at five quarts to a ten-gallon charged fountain. It was never a household quantity.
- Carbonation pressureOne hundred pounds of pressure was routine in a fountain's steel cylinder and is far beyond what any home carbonation equipment is built or rated to hold.
- If you want the flavourUse a current commercial root beer or sarsaparilla syrup formula, or a modern recipe built on safrole-free sassafras extract. There is no adjustment to this text that makes it usable.
"Mead" at the American soda fountain had nothing to do with fermented honey wine. It was a trade name for a sweet spiced soda, honey-scented and heavy on sassafras, sold across the counter alongside sarsaparilla, birch and root beer. Recipes like this one belong to the era when the drugstore soda fountain was a compounding operation: the dispenser bruised his own spices in a mortar, ran a decoction of bark on the stove, and boiled the whole thing for the better part of a day. The closing sales pitch for "American Concentrated Syrups" marks the turn away from that world, as manufactured flavour concentrates replaced back-room compounding in the early twentieth century. Tonka and sassafras were unremarkable flavourings then, prized for the same warm vanilla-and-root note that later chemistry identified as coumarin and safrole and removed from the food supply.