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Peach Blow
Three ounces peach juice, 6 drams raspberry juice, 6 drams lemon juice, ounces Holland gin, 27 ounces 11/½ syrup, enough cochineal coloring to give reddish tint, sufficient soda foam. An attractive fountain and good soda are better than a fine location. They will draw trade a block away.
This is a fountain formula rather than a drink recipe: you are compounding about a quart of flavoured syrup, which is then dispensed an ounce or so at a time under carbonated water. The printed text has been mangled by the scanner in two places, so read the quantities with care.
- Missing and garbled amountsThe gin quantity has dropped out of the line entirely (" , ounces Holland gin"), and "27 ounces 11/½ syrup" is a broken reading. Neither figure can be honestly reconstructed; treat the syrup as ordinary simple syrup and the gin as a small flavouring measure.
- DramsA fluid dram is one eighth of a fluid ounce, roughly 3.7 ml or three-quarters of a teaspoon. Six drams is therefore about three-quarters of an ounce, or a scant tablespoon and a half.
- "Syrup" at the fountainFountain syrup of this period was cane sugar dissolved to near saturation, on the order of a dozen pounds of sugar to the gallon of water in the manuals — much heavier than the 1:1 simple syrup most bars keep. If you use a 1:1 syrup the finished drink will taste thin and watery against the carbonation.
- Soda foam"Soda foam" was a bought foaming preparation, usually an extract of quillaia (soap bark) or a solution of egg albumen, added so the drink would head up in the glass. Quillaia extract is still sold as a food additive at low levels; egg white in an uncooked syrup that will be held is not a good idea.
- CochinealCochineal is the dried scale insect, sold now as carmine or carminic acid. It remains a legal food colour but is a declarable allergen for some people, and any red food colouring gives the same reddish tint.
- The fruit juicesPeach, raspberry and lemon here mean pressed fruit juice, not modern flavouring syrups. Fresh juice in a sugar syrup will ferment or cloud within a few days even refrigerated; make small batches rather than the full quart.
- Yield and serviceThe formula makes roughly 32 ounces of syrup. At a fountain draw of 1 to 1½ ounces per glass, topped with carbonated water, that is about twenty to thirty drinks.
"Peach blow" is an old term for peach blossom, borrowed in the late nineteenth century for a particular pale pink — it named a line of Wheeling art glass and a fashionable shade of dress silk before it named anything to drink. Soda fountain manuals of this kind were written for druggists, who dispensed sodas from behind the same counter as prescriptions, and a small measure of spirits in a fountain syrup raised no eyebrows before Prohibition; Holland gin, the malty juniper spirit now sold as genever, was a common flavouring note. The stray line of trade advice at the end of the formula is characteristic of the genre: these books sold themselves as much on counter salesmanship as on flavour, and the fountain's marble, mirrors and nickel plate were understood to be part of the product.