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Mint Phos
Creme de Menthe Syrup, 1 ounce; Acid Phos from squirter, 1 dash. Solid soda to fill a mineral glass.
A two-ingredient fountain drink that depends entirely on proportion and on how the soda water is drawn. The vocabulary is the only real obstacle.
- "Solid soda"Fountain draft arms offered more than one stream: a fine spray used to build foam and a coarse or "solid" stream that delivered carbonated water in a heavy column. Solid soda here appears to mean filling the glass with plain charged water rather than working up a foamy head.
- The mineral glassA fountain glass of perhaps 8 to 10 fluid ounces, though fountain glassware varied in size. One ounce of syrup was the usual fountain measure.
- "From the squirter"The squirter, or dash bottle, was a stoppered bottle with a narrow spout kept at the counter for acid phosphate and similar tinctures. A dash was a small, unmeasured quantity; modern acid phosphate practice runs to something on the order of a quarter teaspoon, but the original amount is not recorded.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold as a fountain souring agent. It is still manufactured for bartenders. It gives a dry, mineral tartness with none of the fruit flavour that lemon juice or citric acid would add, which is why it suits mint.
- Crème de menthe syrupNot the liqueur. Fountain syrup houses sold a non-alcoholic green mint syrup under that name. A good mint syrup, or a simple syrup infused with peppermint and tinted lightly, stands in directly.
- Order of workSyrup and phosphate into the empty glass first, then the soda. Adding acid to a full glass leaves it sitting on top and the first mouthful is all sourness.
- Yield and serviceOne glass, served at once with a straw. Phosphates were drunk cold and fast; the carbonation is the whole texture of the drink and there is nothing to hold it once it goes.
The phosphate was a mainstay of the American soda fountain from the 1880s through Prohibition: syrup, a dash of acid phosphate, and charged water, sold cheaply across a drugstore counter. Acid phosphate was a pharmacy product before it was a fountain one, marketed in the later nineteenth century as a nerve tonic, and its migration to the syrup rail says a good deal about how closely the American drugstore and the American soft drink were bound together. Mint was a staple flavour in that trade, cheap and reliably green, and the fountain "creme de menthe" syrup borrowed the name of the French liqueur without a drop of spirit in it. The phosphate faded in the mid-twentieth century as bottled sodas took over, surviving in a handful of old fountains, until craft bartenders began ordering acid phosphate again in the last two decades.