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Oolong Glace
Seven ounces plain soda, 1½ ounces tea syrup, 1½ ounce lemon syrup. Stir with spoon and pour into mineral tumbler filled with shaved
A single fountain drink, written in the shorthand a dispenser would have read off the wall behind the counter. The measures are fluid ounces, and the last word of the printed line is cut short: the tumbler is filled with shaved ice.
- Plain sodaCarbonated water drawn from the fountain, unflavoured and unsweetened. Seven ounces is a scant cup; use well-chilled seltzer and draw it hard enough to raise a head.
- Tea syrupNot a commercial product you will find now. Period fountain formulas varied, but it was generally a strong oolong infusion sweetened with simple syrup and kept cold at the counter. Make it fresh; it does not keep well.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was sugar syrup with lemon juice and often a trace of lemon oil, considerably sweeter and sharper than modern lemonade concentrate. Equal parts juice and heavy syrup with a strip of zest steeped in it comes close.
- Mineral tumblerA heavy straight-sided glass, large enough to take the ten ounces of soda and syrup on top of a packed charge of shaved ice. The recipe has the ice in the glass first and the mixed drink poured onto it.
- GlacéGlace -- Here the sense is iced rather than frozen. Shaved ice -- not cubes -- is what the recipe calls for: it chills fast and gives the drink its slushy body as it melts into the syrup.
- YieldOne glass. To scale it, hold the ratio of roughly five parts soda to one part tea syrup to one part lemon syrup.
Oolong Glacé belongs to the brief vogue for tea at the American soda fountain, which ran alongside the better-known coffee and chocolate drinks in the decades either side of 1900. Dispensers' manuals of the period list tea syrup as a standard bottle on the counter, usually made in-house from a strong infusion, and oolong — semi-oxidised leaf imported largely from Fujian and Formosa — was widely advertised by name in American grocery trade of the era. Pairing it with lemon syrup is the fountain's version of a habit that was already ordinary in the parlour, and the whole formula reads as an attempt to sell iced tea in a glass the drugstore already knew how to build. The printed line ends abruptly, breaking on "shaved," though what caused the break is unclear.