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Mignonette
Make a seltzer lemonade. Hold spoon in center of glass and pour in ½ ounce claret wine so that it floats on top. Place a spray of mignonette on top.
A fountain lemonade with a claret float, built in the glass and dressed with a flower. The whole point is the layer, so everything depends on pouring slowly over the back of a spoon.
- Seltzer lemonadeAt the fountain this meant about 1 to 1½ ounces of lemon syrup (or the juice of half a lemon with sugar) in a 10- to 12-ounce glass, filled with plain carbonated water over ice. Keep it on the tart side so the wine reads as sweet against it.
- ClaretIn American fountain usage claret meant red Bordeaux, and the term was applied loosely to dry, lean, unoaked reds of that character. Half an ounce is one tablespoon.
- Floating the wineRest the bowl of a spoon just above the surface at the center of the glass and pour so the wine spreads across the top rather than dropping through. Chilled soda and undisturbed ice help the layer hold; stirring destroys it.
- The mignonetteReseda odorata, grown in the period for its scent. It is a decorative garnish rather than a culinary flower and is not sold as food today. Omit it, or use a scented edible flower from a grower who sells for eating.
- YieldOne tall glass. The recipe assumes fountain proportions, so build it in the serving glass rather than mixing and dividing.
- On the alcoholHalf an ounce of wine in a large soda is a flavor and color accent, not a cocktail, but it is still wine and should not go to anyone avoiding alcohol.
Soda fountains of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries borrowed freely from the bar, and the claret float was one such borrowing: claret lemonade, claret punch and their fountain cousins put a spoonful of red wine on top of a carbonated drink for the sake of the stripe as much as the taste. Flower names turn up among fountain drinks, where a violet, a rose petal or, here, a spray of mignonette signaled that the dispenser was selling refinement alongside refreshment. Mignonette itself was a popular garden and greenhouse plant of the era, valued for a heavy sweet scent rather than any showy bloom, and its name is a French diminutive of mignon, usually glossed as "little darling".