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Orange Blend
One ounce vanilla syrup, 1 ounce red orange syrup, 2 ounces ice cream, ¼ glass ice. Shake, strain, toss and serve.
A fountain formula written in the shorthand a dispenser could read at a glance. Translated for a home bar, it is a shaken orange-vanilla drink built on ice cream rather than dairy alone.
- The measuresThe syrups are fluid ounces: 2 tablespoons each. The 2 ounces of ice cream may be by measure (about 1/4 cup) or by weight; the book does not say. Added together the ingredients come to about 4 ounces, plus whatever the ice melts in.
- "¼ glass ice"Presumably a quarter of the fountain's own mixing glass, whose size the book leaves unstated; a few ounces of cracked or shaved ice. Since the drink is strained, the ice is for chilling and dilution only.
- Red orange syrupMost likely an orange syrup tinted red rather than a blood-orange syrup, though the recipe does not say which. Any good orange syrup works; a drop of red colouring reproduces the deeper look.
- "Toss"Most likely pouring the strained mixture between two vessels to mix and aerate it; the book does not describe the motion or say how many times.
- Ice cream as a body-builderTwo ounces of ice cream is there for texture, not as a float. Let it soften slightly so it emulsifies in the shake instead of breaking into lumps that clog the strainer.
- FinishingThe recipe stops at 'serve' and says nothing about soda water. Some fountain blends were topped up with carbonated water; whether this one was is not stated. Taken as written it is a small, very sweet drink.
- SweetnessFountain syrups were generally heavier than most modern bottled syrups. If yours is lighter, expect a thinner, less sweet drink.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were trade books, sold to druggists who dispensed drinks alongside prescriptions, and their recipes are written in the compressed, assembly-line style of a working counter: quantities in ounces, ice measured by fraction of a glass, and verbs like "toss" that assumed an apprentice standing at your elbow. Orange was one of the fountain's staple fruit flavours, and here it is paired with vanilla syrup. The habit of tinting orange syrup red belongs to an era before food-colouring regulation, when appearance was considered part of the product. Blends of this kind are generally said to have flourished from the 1890s through the 1920s, the heyday of the American drugstore counter.