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Mint Toddy
One ounce sweet mint syrup, 4 ounces shaved ice, dash of brandy or bitters. Fill with Royal Ruby champagne.
A soda fountain formula written for someone standing behind the counter with a syrup rail and a carbonator. Translating it mostly means working out what the proprietary names meant and what glass it went into.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesFountain measures are volumetric throughout: 1 oz of syrup is 2 tablespoons, and 4 oz of shaved ice is about half a cup by volume, not by weight. Shaved ice, not cubes — it chills and dilutes fast, which is the point in a drink finished with carbonated liquid.
- Sweet mint syrupA simple syrup flavoured with mint, of the kind fountains generally bought in ready-made. Equal parts sugar and water brought to a boil, steeped off the heat with a generous handful of spearmint and strained, gives something close; peppermint extract is a different and much sharper flavour.
- "Royal Ruby champagne"Evidently a proprietary fountain syrup, drawn into the glass and charged with carbonated water rather than wine; fountain trade names borrowed "champagne" freely for anything effervescent. What it actually tasted of is not recorded; a red fruit soda stands in for it.
- The dash of brandyA small dash, no more; the recipe gives no measure. Bitters were the interchangeable alternative, which suggests the dash was there for aromatic bite rather than strength; Angostura does the job. Drugstore fountains often had spirits to hand as part of the pharmacist's stock.
- "Toddy" does not mean hot hereDespite the name, nothing is heated. Fountain drinks routinely took cocktail and toddy names as marketing, and this one is served cold and fizzing.
- Glass and assemblySyrup and ice first, dash on top, then fill — a 10 to 12 oz soda glass takes the stated quantities with room for the head. Stir once, briefly; heavy stirring knocks the carbonation flat.
- YieldOne drink.
Soda fountain manuals of this period are full of drinks wearing the names of bar drinks -- toddies, cobblers, punches, fizzes -- sold across a marble counter in drugstores that in many towns were among the few respectable places to get a cold sweet drink. Mint syrup was a fountain staple, cheap to make and instantly recognisable, and the "dash of brandy or bitters" reflects the peculiar position of the American druggist, who often kept spirits on hand as materia medica. Names like "Royal Ruby champagne" appear to have come from the syrup houses that supplied the trade, and they came and went with the companies that coined them, which is why so many fountain recipes now read as half-legible: neither the firm nor the label has outlived the branded ingredient.