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Mint Freeze Or Irish Iceberg
Fill a champagne glass with finely shaved ice. Over this pour 1 ounce of American Creme de Menthe Syrup, and finish with a thin slice of lemon, and a creme de menthe cherry.
A fountain frappe rather than a cocktail: shaved ice, green mint syrup, garnish. The only real work is the ice.
- Creme de menthe syrup is not the liqueurThis is a fountain syrup, and the recipe says so. "American" most likely distinguished a domestic product from the imported French liqueur it imitated: sugar syrup with peppermint oil and green coloring. Substituting actual creme de menthe turns this into a different drink entirely. Any green peppermint soda syrup works, or make your own from a heavy simple syrup with a few drops of peppermint extract.
- The ounceOne fluid ounce is 2 tablespoons, which is right for a glass holding 4 to 6 ounces of ice. If your syrup is thinner than a heavy simple syrup, taste and adjust upward.
- The champagne glassIn period fountain use this generally meant a stemmed, wide-mouthed glass of a few ounces rather than a modern flute. A coupe or a small dessert glass gives the right proportion of ice surface to syrup.
- Finely shaved ice is the whole dishCrushed ice from a bag has too much void space and the syrup runs straight to the bottom. Shave or blitz it to a dry snow that packs; the syrup should stain the top and bleed down slowly. Mound it above the rim rather than levelling it.
- Serve it immediatelyThere is nothing holding this together but cold. Shave the ice into a chilled glass, pour, garnish, and hand it over — five minutes on a counter and it is green sugar water.
- The cherryA "creme de menthe cherry" would have been a green mint-flavored cocktail cherry of the sort fountain suppliers sold. Green cocktail cherries are still available; a standard maraschino left an hour in the mint syrup does the same job.
- YieldOne glass. Doubling means two glasses, not a bigger one.
Soda fountains sold drinks by their looks, and this one is a color joke with two names attached — green shaved ice reading as either mint or as Ireland. The drink also belongs to the wider fountain habit of borrowing the vocabulary of the bar without the alcohol: creme de menthe, frappe, the champagne glass itself. American manufacturers built a substantial trade in imitation cordial syrups precisely so that a druggist could serve something that looked like a liqueur to customers who did not drink, or could not, and the practice was already well established before national Prohibition gave it a second life.