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Peach Floss Syrup
American Peach Floss, 1 quart; American Fruit Acid, 1 ounce. Plain Syrup 3 or 4 quarts
This is a dispenser's compounding formula rather than a kitchen recipe: two proprietary bottled preparations stirred into bulk simple syrup for use behind a soda fountain. Reading it usefully means knowing what the trade names stood for and what proportions were assumed.
- Plain syrupIn fountain practice "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" meant a heavy sugar syrup; trade formularies generally give something on the order of 7 to 8 pounds of sugar per gallon, close to saturation. A modern 2:1 sugar-to-water syrup by weight is roughly comparable; a thinner syrup will carry the flavour less well and keep less well.
- The two bought-in productsAmerican Peach Floss and American Fruit Acid read as proprietary trade preparations rather than generic ingredients, of the sort supplied to fountains in bulk. Neither has a direct modern retail counterpart, so the formula cannot be reproduced literally.
- What "floss" meantFountain "foam" preparations were flavouring extracts carrying a foaming agent, usually quillaia (soap bark) extract, which gave the drawn soda a lasting head; a "floss" line was probably of the same type, though this entry does not say so. Quillaia extract remains a permitted beverage foaming agent in a number of jurisdictions, subject to defined limits, rather than a home ingredient.
- Fruit acid"Fruit acid" in this trade meant a solution of citric or tartaric acid, sometimes both, used to give sweet syrups the tartness that made them taste of fruit rather than of sugar. One ounce to four or five quarts of finished syrup is a light hand; the acid is corrective, not dominant.
- The ambiguous quantity"Plain Syrup 3 or 4 quarts" is deliberately open. The dispenser judged strength against his own stock and his own trade, so the finished syrup ran anywhere from roughly one part flavour in four to one in five. There is no single correct conversion here.
- Yield and serviceAs written the batch comes to four or five quarts of finished syrup. Fountain practice was about 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces of syrup per glass, drawn up with carbonated water, so a batch of this size covers somewhere between about 85 and 160 drinks depending on the pour and on whether three or four quarts of plain syrup were used.
- KeepingHeavy sugar syrup with added acid keeps for weeks refrigerated, but these formulas were written for a shop turning stock over quickly in a cooled fountain crock. Scale down rather than making four quarts for a household.
This belongs to a genre of trade formularies published for druggists and fountain men in the decades when the soda fountain was a fixture of American drugstores. Their "recipes" are largely instructions for combining branded extracts, acids and foam preparations bought by the gallon from supply houses, which is why entries like this one read as ratios rather than as cookery. Peach was among the common fountain flavours alongside vanilla, chocolate, cherry and orange, and "floss" preparations appear to have been sold on the promise of a thick, persistent head on the glass, the visual signature that distinguished a properly drawn soda from plain sweetened water. The convention of building drinks from a stock plain syrup, then flavouring and acidulating it, is still recognisable in bar and cafe syrup practice today.