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Napa Soda
One ounce blood orange syrup, 1 dram lime juice. Fill 8-ounce glass 7% full with coarse stream carbonated water, add above and stir.
A two-ingredient fountain drink whose only real difficulty is the notation, which belongs to a dispenser working behind a marble counter rather than to a home cook.
- "7% full" is a typo"7% full" is almost certainly a mangled fraction — most likely 7/8 full. In an 8-ounce glass that is about 7 ounces of carbonated water, with the ounce of syrup bringing it to the rim.
- A dramA fluid dram is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, roughly 3.7 mL, or a scant three-quarters of a teaspoon. A half-teaspoon plus a few drops is close enough.
- An ounce of syrupPeriod fountain syrup was commonly made in the region of a pound of sugar per pint of water with flavoring added, so an ounce carries a great deal of sweetness. Modern bottled blood orange syrups vary widely; taste and adjust down rather than up.
- "Coarse stream"Soda fountains offered a coarse (wide, gentle) and a fine (narrow, forceful) stream from the same carbonated water. The coarse stream was used when you wanted volume without whipping up a head of foam. From a siphon or a bottle, pour down the side of the glass.
- Water first, then syrupFountain formulas often draw the syrup first and shoot water onto it. Here the order is reversed and the drink is stirred. Follow it as written.
- Blood orange syrupBlood orange syrup meant a syrup flavored with blood orange, valued for its color as much as its taste, though commercial fountain syrups of the period were often imitation-flavored and colored. A good-quality blood orange cordial, or a homemade syrup of juice and sugar with a little zest, stands in; grenadine does not.
- YieldOne 8-ounce glass. The recipe says nothing about ice; a drink like this depends on chilled carbonated water and should be drunk before the fizz goes.
The name points to Napa Soda Springs in Napa County, California, a naturally carbonated mineral spring whose bottled water was sold across the United States from the middle of the nineteenth century and was well enough known to work as shorthand on a fountain menu. Naming mixed drinks after famous mineral waters was standard practice in the trade — Vichy, Seltzer, Congress and Apollinaris all lent their names to fountain preparations, some poured from the genuine imported water and some built up with salts to imitate it. What is actually in the glass is plain charged water, a citrus syrup and a squeeze of lime.