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Pepsin Soda
American Pepsin Soda Extract, ½ ounces; Plain Syrup, 1 gallon; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce.
This is a fountain syrup formula, not a finished drink: the three ingredients are combined into a gallon of flavoring syrup that is then drawn by the ounce and topped with carbonated water at the tap. Two of the three components were proprietary trade goods and no longer exist under those names.
- What "plain syrup" meansFountain plain syrup was a heavy simple syrup, typically in the region of 6 to 7 lb of sugar per gallon of finished syrup — denser than a 1:1 kitchen syrup. It was made by hot or cold process and kept covered at the counter.
- Ambiguous half-ouncesFountain books used ounces for both weight and fluid measure without distinguishing. Both the pepsin extract and the foam were sold as liquids, so fluid ounces are the reasonable reading, but the original does not say so.
- American Pepsin Soda ExtractA branded flavoring concentrate, not a generic ingredient. Pepsin itself is a digestive enzyme obtained from hog stomach lining; the extract carried it in a sweetened, aromatic base. Nothing on a modern shelf substitutes for it directly.
- American Soda FoamFoam preparations of the period were solutions of quillaia (soapbark) extract, sometimes with egg albumen or gum, added purely to give the drawn soda a lasting head. Quillaia extract is still permitted as a beverage foaming agent, but at tightly limited levels.
- The pepsin was largely decorativePepsin is only active in strongly acid conditions and is degraded by heat. Sitting in a sugar syrup and then diluted with carbonated water, it did nothing digestive worth measuring — the appeal was the word on the sign, not enzymology.
- Proportion at the tapStandard fountain practice was 1 to 1½ fl oz of syrup per glass, filled with carbonated water and stirred once. A gallon of this syrup therefore yields roughly 85 to 125 drinks.
- KeepingFlavoring extracts in the fountain trade were added to syrup in gallon lots, a quantity suited to a busy shop's turnover. A gallon of aromatic syrup made at home will fade well before it is drunk; scale down.
Pepsin was isolated and named in the 1830s, and by the 1890s it had become one of the great commercial cure-alls of American retail — pepsin chewing gum, pepsin lozenges, pepsin tonics, and at the soda fountain a pepsin soda promoted as an aid to the overfed. The fountain of this era doubled as a dispensary; the druggist who mixed phosphates and ice cream sodas at one end of the counter sold dyspepsia remedies at the other, and drinks like this one sat deliberately between the two, sweet enough to order for pleasure and medicinal enough to justify ordering. The formula's reliance on two named trade products is typical of the genre: fountain manuals of the period were often issued or subsidized by the supply houses whose extracts and foams they specified. The name of Pepsi-Cola, introduced by a North Carolina druggist in the late 1890s, is generally traced to the same enthusiasm for pepsin and dyspepsia relief, though the drink itself is not known to have contained the enzyme.