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Nectar Cream Syrup (To quarts of sweet cream add)
To 2 quarts of sweet cream add 2 pounds of pulverized sugar, and stir until dissolved; add 1 quart orange syrup, i quart of pineapple syrup, 1 quart strawberry syrup, and a few drops vanilla extract. Color a pretty pink. Mix thoroughly and draw in a large soda glass with fine and coarse stream; can be served with either plain or ice cream. SNOWFLAKE ICE SHAVER.
Don't forget that soda is not like an ordinary purchase. People require some things, but they must be tempted to soda.
This is a fountain syrup, not a drink: a cream base to be drawn against carbonated water in the glass. The quantities are commercial, and the acid-plus-cream chemistry is the part that will trip you up.
- Scale it down hardAs written this makes roughly five quarts of finished syrup, enough for dozens of sodas. A tenth of the recipe — about 3/4 cup cream, a scant 1/2 cup (3 oz) sugar, and about 1 1/4 cups total of the three fruit syrups — is a sensible test batch.
- Acid will curdle the creamStrawberry, pineapple and orange fountain syrups are all acidic, and cream flocculates on contact. Mix cold, mix just before service, and expect a batch held overnight to separate or turn grainy no matter how thoroughly it was stirred.
- Keep it cold and use it upA cream syrup of this kind would have been kept cold at the fountain and turned over quickly. Refrigerate at 40F or below and discard what is left at the end of the day; there is no acidity or sugar concentration here high enough to preserve it.
- Pulverized sugarThat means finely ground sugar — closest to modern superfine or caster sugar. Ordinary granulated will dissolve in cold cream with patience; confectioners' sugar brings cornstarch with it.
- The fruit syrups are heavyPeriod fountain syrups were roughly a pound of sugar to a pint of liquid, thick and intensely sweet. Modern thin coffee-shop flavoring syrups are far weaker; if you use them, the finished base will be watery and underflavored.
- "Color a pretty pink"At the period fountain this would have been a carmine or coal-tar dye kept in a dropper bottle. A drop or two of red food coloring does the same job.
- Fine and coarse streamA soda draft arm had two settings. The coarse stream goes in first to agitate and blend the syrup, the fine stream fills and builds the foam head. On a home siphon or seltzer bottle, add a splash to slurry the syrup, then top up gently.
- ServingFigure 1 1/2 to 2 fluid ounces of this base per 10- to 12-ounce glass of soda water, with a scoop of vanilla ice cream if you want the ice cream soda version.
This recipe belongs to the trade literature of the soda fountain's peak years, when the drugstone counter was a genuine restaurant business and the dispenser was expected to invent as well as pour. "Nectar" was one of the stock fountain names — attached to syrups, creams and phosphates with no fixed formula — and cream syrups like this one plausibly offered a way to make plain carbonated water taste like a dessert, though the recipe itself also offers an ice-cream version. Note that the page runs straight into an advertisement for a Snowflake Ice Shaver and a line of counter philosophy: "People require some things, but they must be tempted to soda." Books like this were sold to proprietors as much for the salesmanship as the formulas, and the two were printed shoulder to shoulder.