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Mintine
Lemon juice, 3 dashes; lemon syrup, 1 ounce; creme de menthe, 1 ounce ; shaved ice. Serve in 8-ounce glass with straws.
A two-syrup fountain drink of the sort a dispenser could build in fifteen seconds. The measurements are fountain measurements, and one key ingredient is not what a bar-trained reader will assume.
- Crème de menthe means syrup hereIn a soda fountain book this is the non-alcoholic green (or white) mint syrup sold to dispensers, not the liqueur. Use a mint syrup; the liqueur runs roughly 20 to 30 percent alcohol and would put liquor into what was sold as a temperance drink.
- A dashAt the fountain a dash was a quick tip of the bottle, about 1/8 teaspoon. Three dashes of lemon juice is under half a teaspoon — it sharpens the syrups rather than making the drink sour.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was a heavy sweet syrup, often around 2:1 sugar to water, flavoured with juice and oil of lemon. Modern bottled lemon syrups and cordials tend to be thinner and more acidic, so start with about three quarters of an ounce and taste.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved or finely cracked ice chills fast and lets the straws work; cubes leave the syrups sitting at the bottom in a dense layer. Fill the glass loosely rather than packing it.
- Build orderSyrups and juice first, then the shaved ice. Give it one short pull with a spoon.
- YieldOne eight-ounce glass, which by modern standards is a small drink. Scale the syrups proportionally if you use a twelve- or sixteen-ounce glass.
Fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries borrowed freely from the bar, and drinks like this one are bar recipes with the alcohol engineered out. American syrup houses sold flavouring syrups under the names of liqueurs — crème de menthe, curaçao, maraschino — so that a dispenser could offer a customer something that looked and tasted like a mixed drink and cost a nickel. The name Mintine follows the period fashion for coining product-sounding names with an -ine ending, the same instinct behind dozens of proprietary tonics and phosphates. The soda fountain's rise is generally tied to the temperance movement and to the drugstore, where the same counter that dispensed medicine dispensed refreshment; a mint and lemon cooler sat comfortably in both roles, since mint was long considered settling to the stomach.