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Mixed Fruit
One ounce vanilla syrup, ½ ounce cream, 1 glass plain soda drawn in fine stream. Add two tablespoonfuls of the mixed fruit, finely cut and thoroughly saturated with simple syrup. Serve with spoon and straw.
A fountain drink built in the glass rather than shaken: syrup and cream first, carbonated water drawn over them, macerated fruit spooned in last. Everything depends on the soda being cold and the fruit being wet with syrup rather than dry.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesOne ounce of vanilla syrup is 2 tablespoons; half an ounce of cream is 1 tablespoon. Fountain men measured with a graduated syrup pump, but a jigger works.
- "One glass" of sodaFountain glasses of the period commonly ran somewhere in the range of 8 to 12 ounces, and drinks of this kind were generally made to fill the glass. On that assumption, something like 6 to 7 ounces of soda water is left once syrup, cream and fruit are accounted for.
- Plain soda, fine stream"Plain soda" is unflavoured carbonated water. The fine stream is the narrow, high-pressure draw from the fountain, used to cut the syrup and cream together; at home, pour chilled seltzer down the side in a thin steady stream rather than dumping it in.
- CreamFountain cream was ordinary sweet dairy cream, probably closest to today's half-and-half or light cream. Heavy cream will work, though it makes a heavier, richer drink.
- The mixed fruitThis is fountain "crushed fruit" -- diced strawberries, pineapple, cherries, peaches or whatever is in season, cut small and left to stand in simple syrup until the juices run. Dry fruit sinks and tastes thin; the recipe asks for it to be thoroughly saturated, and it should be kept cold.
- Order of buildingSyrup and cream go in before the soda so the stream mixes them. The fruit goes in last so it stays suspended and visible rather than being churned to the bottom.
- YieldOne drink. Serve at once, with both a long spoon and a straw, since the fruit has to be eaten out of the glass.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were written for the druggist's clerk, not the home cook: the fountain was a fixture of American pharmacies from the mid-nineteenth century until well past Prohibition, and dispensing formulas were part of the trade. "Mixed fruit" here is a shop preparation -- odds and ends of fruit cut fine and held in simple syrup, which sweetened them and kept them usable through a day's trade. Cream with plain soda and syrup gives what the manuals often called a cream soda, distinct from an ice cream soda in having no ice cream in it; the fruit turns it into something closer to a dessert, eaten with a spoon. Vanilla syrup as a base is typical, vanilla being a workhorse flavour of the fountain.