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Mineral Milk
Draw 6 ounces plain carbonated water into 8-ounce tumbler; fill with plain sweet cream; stir and serve.
A two-ingredient fountain drink whose whole character depends on the temperature and the fat content of the cream. Everything else is a matter of pouring.
- "Sweet cream" means unsouredIn fountain usage sweet cream is simply fresh, unsoured cream, not cream with sugar added. Nothing in this drink is sweetened unless you add syrup yourself.
- Which creamFountain cream of the period was generally a light table cream rather than a heavy whipping cream. Something in the range of modern light cream works; heavy cream at about 36 percent makes the glass cloying.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesSix ounces of soda water leaves about two ounces of headroom in an eight-ounce tumbler, so the cream fill is small relative to the soda. The finished drink is mostly carbonated water tinted and softened by cream.
- Carbonated water at pressureCarbonated water -- An old fountain drew soda colder and more strongly carbonated than bottled water. Use well-chilled, strongly carbonated water and pour down the side of the glass or you will lose most of the gas the moment cream goes in.
- Stir once, brieflyStir briefly -- Cream and soda separate quickly and vigorous stirring flattens the drink, so keep the stirring called for in the recipe to a minimum.
- Serve at onceThere is no emulsifier and no syrup to hold this together. Within a minute or two the cream settles and the fizz goes; it is a drink to be handed across the counter immediately.
- YieldOne eight-ounce glass.
American soda fountains sold far more than flavoured syrups: they kept a dairy case, and plain cream, milk and eggs turned up in dozens of counter formulas. The name here points at the mineral waters that gave the fountain its start, when carbonated water was sold and drunk as a health measure in imitation of European spa springs, and druggists dispensed it beside their prescriptions. A glass of soda cut with cream sat in that borderland between tonic and refreshment: bland, cold, mildly nourishing, and sometimes recommended for people said to have delicate stomachs. Cream behind such a counter was not necessarily pasteurised, and was kept on ice.