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Orange Mint
Orange stock, 1 pint; green mint stock, 1 pint; simple syrup, 2 quarts; juice of 6 lemons. Serve from punch bowl in 8-ounce glasses.
A fountain formula rather than a household one: it assumes you already keep flavoring stocks on the counter and that something cold and fizzy will meet the mixture in the glass.
- What a "stock" isIn fountain usage a stock is a concentrated flavoring syrup, not a broth. Formulas varied, but orange stock was generally orange juice and/or peel flavoring carried in a heavy syrup, and green mint stock a mint-flavored syrup tinted green. Bottled orange syrup and a non-alcoholic creme de menthe syrup stand in for both.
- Fountain simple syrup is heavier than yoursFountain syrup was a dense sugar syrup, not the 1:1 syrup most modern bars keep; published formulas vary, commonly falling somewhere between about 1 and 1.5 lb sugar per pint of water. Using a 1:1 syrup will give a thinner, less sweet punch; a heavier syrup is closer to the intent.
- Juice of 6 lemonsReckon about 3/4 to 1 cup of juice. Add it last and taste, since the whole balance of the drink rests on it against two quarts of syrup.
- It is a base, not a finished punchRoughly 3 quarts of this mixture would be far too sweet to drink neat, and the recipe says nothing about dilution. General fountain practice suggests either drawing an ounce or so into the glass and filling with carbonated water, or diluting the whole batch in the bowl with ice water or soda before serving.
- YieldThe undiluted batch is about 3 quarts, or roughly 96 ounces of syrup. Cut with soda or iced water at one to one and a half ounces a glass it would fill on the order of sixty to ninety-five 8-ounce glasses, depending on how hard you dilute.
- Ice and the bowlUse a large single block or a bowl set in ice rather than loose cubes, which melt fast and flatten the mint. If you dilute with carbonated water in the bowl, do it at the last moment; mint and orange both go dull once the gas is gone.
- ColorThe green mint stock and the orange stock together may read muddy unless the mint tint is strong. Fountain mint syrups were commonly colored green, which is worth knowing before you judge your own batch by eye.
Soda-fountain manuals like this one were written for druggists, who through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ran the fountain as a profitable sideline to the prescription counter and needed formulas by the gallon. The "stock" system is the giveaway: a dispenser kept a rank of concentrated flavoring syrups and combined them to order, so a new drink meant a new proportion rather than a new pantry. Mint syrup, usually dyed a vivid green, was a fountain staple for its cooling associations, and pairing it with orange and lemon follows the standard logic of a citrus punch built on a sweet base. The recipe closes with the instruction to serve from a punch bowl in 8-ounce glasses han a single drink at the counter, though what occasions the compiler had in mind the page does not say.