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Peanut Dope
Peanut butter, 4 ounces (finely ground peanuts can be used also); salt, just a pinch; powdered gum acacia, ¼ ounce; water, 1 ounce; syrup, ½ gallon. gum acacia, ¼ ounce; water, 1 ounce; syrup, 1½ gallon. Rub peanut butter, salt and acacia together in a mortar, add all of water; beat up and add syrup gradually. Small lump of ice cream with this syrup poured over.
A soda-fountain syrup rather than a dessert sauce: the gum acacia is an emulsifier that keeps ground peanut suspended in sugar syrup so it can be pumped and poured all day without separating. Note that the text as printed contains a duplicated, garbled line — treat the first set of quantities as the recipe.
- The duplicated line"gum acacia, 14 ounce; water, 1 ounce; syrup, 1½ gallon" is a printer's or scanner's doubling of the line above it. Fourteen ounces of gum acacia is not plausible against four ounces of peanut butter; read ¼ ounce gum and ½ gallon syrup.
- Gum acaciaGum arabic, sold as a powder for baking and mixology. The recipe has it rubbed dry into the peanut butter and salt before any water goes in, which helps it wet out evenly rather than lumping.
- "Syrup" means simple syrupAt the fountain this is plain sugar syrup, generally around two parts sugar to one part water by weight — heavy enough to resist fermentation in an open pump jar. Half a gallon is 64 fl oz, about 1.9 litres.
- The mortarA mortar and pestle does the work of grinding gum into fat. A small food processor or an immersion blender in a deep jug achieves the same emulsion faster; add the water in a thread rather than all at once if using a blender.
- Peanut butter to useOld-style unstabilised peanut butter, the kind that separates, behaves closest to the 1900s product. Modern hydrogenated brands work but bring their own emulsifiers and added sugar, so cut back on sweetness if the finished syrup tastes flat.
- Yield and keepingRoughly half a gallon of syrup, enough for something like forty to sixty servings at an ounce or two each. Unlike a fruit syrup this one carries fat and protein, so refrigerate it and use within a week; shake before each use even with the gum in.
- ServingA small scoop of vanilla ice cream in a sundae dish with an ounce or two of syrup poured over, as the recipe directs. Such syrups were also shaken into cold milk or soda water.
"Dope" at the soda fountain simply meant a flavouring syrup or the shot of concentrate added to a drink — the same sense that survives in the old Southern habit of calling a cola a dope. Peanut butter reached the fountain trade in the years after it was popularised at the turn of the century as a soft, digestible protein food, first in sanitarium and health-food circles and then as a commercial grocery item; dispensers were quick to find that it emulsified into syrup and gave a rich, slightly savoury sundae unlike the fruit and chocolate standards. The gum acacia is the tell that this is trade formulary rather than home cookery: fountain manuals of the period lean heavily on gum, glycerine and citric acid to make syrups that hold up in a warm shop for weeks, and the men mixing them worked from a mortar and a scale much as a pharmacist did.