Home › At the Fountain › Milk Shake, Chocolate
Milk Shake, Chocolate
Chocolate Syrup, 1½ ounces; Rich Milk, 5 ounces.
Shaved ice to fill tumbler. Shake well and shave some ice on top.
LIGHTNING SHAKER.
A fountain formula rather than a home recipe: quantities are fluid ounces measured into a shaker tumbler, and the finished drink is thin, cold and barely sweet by modern standards.
- The syrup quantity is suspectHalf a fluid ounce of chocolate syrup to five of milk is very lean — a tablespoon in a tall glass. The plural "ounces" suggests a lost numeral, so the ½ may be a misprint; if the drink tastes thin, increase the syrup and taste as you go.
- Ounces are liquid, not weightThese are fluid ounces measured into the tumbler. Five ounces of milk is a generous half cup; the shaved ice brings the glass up to whatever its capacity is, which the recipe does not state.
- "Rich milk"Probably whole milk with a little cream added, homogenised milk not yet being usual. Whole milk works; a tablespoon of heavy cream per glass will read as richer.
- No ice creamThis is a milk shake in the older sense — milk, syrup and ice, shaken. Adding a scoop of ice cream makes a different and much later drink, and would swamp the small amount of syrup called for here.
- Shaved ice, not cubesThe ice is part of the drink and is meant to melt into it as you shake. Cubes will not break down in a shaker; crush or shave the ice, or the result is milk with rocks in it.
- The "Lightning Shaker"Not an ingredient but a piece of equipment, apparently a trade name for a fountain shaker; the note tells the dispenser what to use. A cocktail shaker, or a blender pulsed briefly, does the same job.
- Chocolate syrupFountain chocolate syrup was generally cocoa, sugar and water cooked to a thin pourable syrup, thinner than modern bottled sundae sauce. Adjust the quantity to the syrup you have.
- YieldOne tumbler. Serve at once, before the shaved ice separates out.
Before the electric drink mixer, a "milk shake" at the fountain meant exactly what the name says: milk and flavouring syrup shaken hard with ice in a tumbler, poured out thin and frothy and drunk immediately. Formula books like this one were trade manuals, written for the dispenser standing behind the marble counter with a rack of syrups at hand, which is why the entries read as ratios rather than recipes and why they name the equipment — the shaker brand — as casually as an ingredient. Chocolate syrup was among the workhorse flavours of the American fountain, sitting alongside vanilla, lemon and the various fruit and phosphate syrups. The thick ice-cream milkshake most people picture now belongs to the era after spindle mixers became standard fountain equipment in the early twentieth century; recipes of this earlier shaken type typically call for no ice cream, relying on shaved ice instead.