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Peach Blossom
One quart American crushed peaches well mixed with 3 quarts simple syrup; add 2 ounces American peach brandy. One full ounce to a mineral ounces American peach brandy. One full ounce to a mineral glass, ½ ounce of milk or cream, fine and coarse stream to make a creamy drink; top with grated nutmeg drink; top with grated nutmeg.
A fountain syrup rather than a finished drink: the first sentence builds a batch of peach syrup, the second tells the dispenser how to draw a single glass from it. Read it in those two halves and it makes sense.
- The batchOne quart of crushed peaches to three quarts of simple syrup, plus two ounces of peach brandy, gives roughly a gallon of flavouring syrup. At one ounce per glass that is about 128 servings, so scale down hard for home use — a cup of crushed peaches to three cups of syrup with a scant teaspoon of brandy is a workable fraction.
- Simple syrup at the fountainFountain syrups were generally heavier than a modern bar's 1:1 syrup, though formularies vary in the sugar-to-water proportion they give. A thin 1:1 syrup will taste comparatively watery here.
- A mineral glassThe standard fountain glass of the period held about 8 to 10 ounces. One ounce of syrup and half an ounce of cream in it leaves the rest to carbonated water.
- Fine and coarse streamFountain taps offered a fine, high-pressure jet and a coarse, gentler flow. The fine stream is used first to whip the syrup and cream into a foam; the coarse stream fills the glass without knocking the head down. A soda siphon approximates the fine stream; pour the remainder slowly down the side.
- American crushed peachesThis means peaches crushed in sugar and preserved, the fountain trade's standard fruit product, not fresh fruit. Ripe peaches mashed with an equal weight of sugar and left an hour will stand in for it; canned peaches drained and crushed also work, with the syrup reduced accordingly.
- The brandyTwo ounces spread across a gallon of syrup is a flavouring, not a spirit measure — on the order of half a millilitre, a few drops, in each one-ounce glass. It can be left out with little loss, or replaced with a few drops of almond extract for a similar stone-fruit note.
- Cream and acidAcid can unsettle cream, and carbonated water is mildly acidic, so combining the cream with the syrup before the glass is filled is the safer order. That is in any case the sequence the recipe gives.
- NutmegGrate it over the finished foam at the last moment. Pre-ground nutmeg sinks and tastes dusty.
Soda fountains ran on syrups, and a fountain's reputation rested on the quality of its fruit stock. "Crushed peaches" was trade language for a packed fruit sold to dispensers in bulk; formularies of the era list crushed strawberry, pineapple and cherry alongside it. The half-ounce of cream marks this as one of the creamy fountain drinks of the period, when the dispenser's skill lay in managing two water streams to build a stable foam. A trace of peach brandy in a fountain syrup is consistent with pre-Prohibition fountain practice, where a small measure of spirit could serve as a flavouring rather than as liquor.