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Peach Syrup
American Concentrated Peach Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a dispensing formula rather than a cooking recipe: a druggist's fountain man diluted a purchased concentrate with his own house syrup and sharpened it with acid. Everything hinges on what the three components actually were.
- Plain syrupThe fountain standard was a heavy simple syrup, roughly 2 parts granulated sugar to 1 part water by weight (about 7 lb sugar per gallon of finished syrup), dissolved with gentle heat and not boiled hard enough to invert or colour it. A thin 1:1 syrup will give a watery, flat-tasting drink at the usual dispensing rate.
- Concentrated peach syrupProbably a commercial article of the period, peach juice or essence reduced and sweetened; the capitalised name suggests it may have been a proprietary brand rather than a generic description. There is no exact modern equivalent on a grocery shelf; a good unsweetened peach concentrate or a heavily reduced peach puree strained clear is the closest, and the sugar in the plain syrup will need adjusting downward if your concentrate is sweetened.
- Fruit acidIn fountain formularies this often means a solution of citric or tartaric acid in water rather than the dry crystals, though the strength of such solutions varies from book to book. If your source is powder, dissolve it first and add to taste.
- Ounces, fluid or weightThe quart is plainly liquid measure; whether the ounce of acid is fluid or by weight the text does not settle, so add the acid in stages and stop when the peach reads bright rather than sharp.
- Yield and dispensing rateThe formula makes one gallon of finished syrup. At the standard fountain draw of 1 to 1.5 fluid ounces per glass topped with carbonated water, that is roughly 85 to 128 drinks.
- Keeping itThere is no preservative here beyond sugar, and a fruit syrup left at room temperature can ferment or grow mould. Make it in the quantity you will use, keep it refrigerated in a scalded bottle, and discard it if it turns cloudy or gassy.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were written for pharmacists, not cooks. Through the second half of the nineteenth century the American drugstore fountain grew from a sideline dispensing mineral waters into the main attraction, and the druggist was expected to compound his own flavouring syrups from concentrates, essences and acids bought from wholesale houses. Peach was one of the standard fruit flavours alongside strawberry, raspberry, pineapple and lemon. The "fruit acid" step is the tell that this is trade practice rather than home cookery: sugar syrup and fruit concentrate alone taste cloying, and a measured dose of citric or tartaric acid restores the tartness that reducing and sweetening had stripped out, the same job the acid does in a modern commercial soft drink.