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Orange Ice Cream Shake
Same as regular milk shake, with addition of tablespoonful of ice cream, using orange syrup. This makes a delicious drink with a creamy top.
This is shorthand written for someone standing behind a fountain who already knows the house milk shake. Translated, it is cold milk shaken hard with a measure of fruit syrup and one spoonful of ice cream for body and foam.
- What a milk shake meant thenNot the thick spoonable drink of the mid-century diner. The fountain version was typically an ounce or so of flavouring syrup to a glassful of very cold milk, agitated until frothy and poured into a tall glass. The single tablespoon of ice cream here reads as a foam-builder and enrichment rather than the base.
- Orange syrupFountain orange syrup was generally a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with orange oil or peel and sharpened with acid, not simply orange juice. A commercial orange soda syrup or a homemade sugar syrup infused with zest will behave better than juice, which is thinner and more acidic.
- The curdling problemAcid plus milk equals curds, so keep both milk and syrup thoroughly cold, shake briefly and hard, and serve at once. A drink left standing will separate.
- EquipmentA shaker tin is the basic tool, and a spindle drink mixer where the fountain had one; a cocktail shaker or a blender pulsed for a few seconds does the same work. Avoid long blending, which warms the milk and flattens the head.
- The creamy topThe froth is what the recipe is drawing attention to. Add the ice cream last, mix only until it has broken up, and pour so the foam rides on top; nutmeg was sometimes dusted over plain fountain milk drinks but would fight the orange.
- YieldOne glass. Mix by the glass rather than in a batch, since the foam does not hold.
The instruction assumes you already know the shop's standard milk shake and only records the variation. In the 1880s a "milk shake" could still mean a spirituous drink, but by the turn of the century the term had settled on cold milk shaken with flavouring syrup, and the addition of a spoonful of ice cream, as here, marks the transition toward the ice-cream-based shake that took over after mechanical spindle mixers became common fountain equipment in the 1910s and 1920s. Orange was among the fruit syrups a fountain might keep on hand, and its acidity made it one of the trickier ones to marry with milk.