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Mexican Sundae
Ginger cordial syrup, mix with ginger fruit, pour over vanilla ice cream, sprinkle cinnamon over. Serve in sundae cup and top off with maraschino cherries. "Quality rather than variety will make the reputation of the soda department of your business."
A fountain formula rather than a recipe in the domestic sense: no quantities, because the counterman was working from bottled syrups and jarred fruit at arm's reach. Everything here scales to one cup.
- Ginger cordial syrupFountain "cordial" syrups were heavy sugar syrups, flavored with an extract or an infusion — here ginger. A homemade version is ginger simmered in simple syrup and strained; commercial ginger syrup works, though modern ones tend to be thinner and less sweet than fountain stock.
- "Ginger fruit"Most likely preserved stem ginger in syrup, the product sold today in jars as stem ginger or ginger in syrup. Crystallized ginger, chopped, is the nearest substitute but is drier and much more assertive; use less of it.
- ProportionsThe recipe specifies none. A workable modern reading is 1 to 1.5 fl oz of syrup and a spoonful of fruit over about 4 oz of ice cream per cup.
- CinnamonGround cinnamon shaken over cold ice cream will sit on the surface and can taste dusty. A very light dusting from a shaker, applied last after the fruit, works best.
- Maraschino cherriesThe name originally meant cherries steeped in maraschino liqueur, though by the fountain era brine-cured, dyed, sweetened cherries had largely displaced them in the American trade. Modern bright red cocktail cherries are the direct descendant; Luxardo-style cherries are closer to the older product.
- Sundae cupA footed tulip or a wide-mouthed glass sundae dish. Chilling it helps, since a warm glass will melt the ice cream quickly.
- YieldOne serving.
Soda-fountain manuals of this era were trade books, written for druggists whose fountains had become a serious profit center, and their entries read like short orders because that is what they were. Ginger, in cordial syrup and in preserved stem form, was a fountain staple carried over from the pharmacy shelf, where ginger had long been stocked as a stomachic. The closing line about quality rather than variety is the book's editorial voice — a standing rebuke to proprietors who padded their menus with dozens of near-identical sundaes instead of keeping their cream fresh and their syrups honest.