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National Punch
Three-fourths ounce strawberry syrup, ¾ ounce raspberry syrup, ¾ ounce orange syrup, juice of ½ lemon, ½ glass shaved ice. Fill 12-ounce glass with coarse stream carbonated water, mix with spoon, decorate with fruit in season, and serve with straws. You don't want accidental trade on soda-you want regular custom. The fountain tells people whether you are making a specialty of soda or not.
A soda-fountain punch, built to order in a tall glass. The proportions are sound; only the equipment and the syrups need translating.
- The measuresThree-fourths of a fluid ounce is 1½ tablespoons, so the three syrups together come to about 2¼ oz — roughly a generous quarter-cup of sweetener in a 12-ounce glass. Fountains of the period were equipped with syrup pumps and ladles; a jigger works as well.
- Fountain syrups are not modern squeeze syrupsPeriod strawberry, raspberry and orange syrups were heavy sugar syrups carrying fruit juice or extract. Modern snow-cone and similar bottled syrups tend to be thinner and more aggressively flavoured, so it is worth starting with less and adjusting.
- "Coarse stream"Fountain heads offered a coarse (fast, aerated) stream and a fine one. The coarse stream was used to knock the syrups and ice into suspension as the glass filled, which is why only a token stir with the spoon follows. Pour seltzer hard down the centre and you get the same effect.
- Shaved ice mattersHalf a glass of shaved or finely cracked ice chills and dilutes fast, which is the point of a punch. Cubes leave the drink sweet on top and thin at the bottom.
- The lemonHalf a lemon gives about 1 tablespoon of juice. It is doing structural work here against 2¼ oz of syrup — leave it out and the drink is cloying.
- YieldOne 12-ounce glass, one serving. Scaling for a pitcher works, but add the carbonated water at the last moment and only over ice.
- The last two sentences"You don't want accidental trade on soda" is shop advice to the proprietor, not part of the method. These manuals routinely dropped counter-trade homilies into the middle of a formula.
The American soda fountain treated "punch" as a category rather than a single drink: a tall glass, two or three fruit syrups, a squeeze of lemon for backbone, shaved ice and carbonated water, finished with whatever fruit the season provided. The name arguably borrowed the respectability of the alcoholic punch bowl while keeping the glass strictly temperance he social alained the saloon alternative" — druggists' fountains were often the social alternative to the saloon, and evocative names like National or Fourth of July plausibly served to dress up what was, chemically, three syrups and a lemon. Manuals of this kind were written for the man behind the counter rather than the home cook, which is why the formula ends with a lecture on building regular custom: the fountain was a profit centre, and the trade press insisted that a well-run one advertised itself.