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Plum Champagne Syrup
American Plum Juice, 1 quart.
Add enough simple syrup to make 11½ gallons and 4½ ounces of American Fruit Acid. If a 10-pound syrup is used, add 2 pounds sugar to the juice, and dissolve by stirring or by slight heat, but avoid boiling. Serve like "Orange Phosphate" in small, thin tumblers. Fill the tumbler with soda water, using the large stream only, and stir gently with a soda water spoon. This is a seller.
This is a bulk fountain formula written for a dispenser who was drawing hundreds of glasses a day, not a home cook. Almost everything here needs translating, starting with the scale.
- The quantities are for a soda fountainEleven and a half gallons of finished syrup is roughly 1,470 fluid ounces, or on the order of a thousand drinks at the usual ounce and a half of syrup per glass. To work at home, treat the ratio rather than the volume: one quart of juice carries about 46 quarts of syrup, so scale down proportionally -- one cup of juice to about eleven and a half quarts of syrup, with the acid reduced in proportion.
- The juice-to-syrup ratio looks thin, and may be a misprintThe juice-to-syrup ratio looks thin -- One quart of plum juice in 11½ gallons is a dilution of about 1 to 46, weaker than many fruit syrups. Whether the printed gallon figure is what the author intended cannot be established from the page. Taste as you go and add juice until the flavour survives a glass of soda water.
- "American Fruit Acid"Evidently a proprietary acid preparation sold to the fountain trade; such solutions were usually dilute citric or tartaric acid in water, but the composition is not given here. Its strength is not stated either, so 4½ ounces cannot be converted honestly. Food-grade citric acid dissolved in water is the modern equivalent; add it a little at a time until the syrup has a clean tartness.
- "A 10-pound syrup"Fountain syrups were graded by the weight of sugar going into them, so a 10-pound syrup is a lighter stock than the heaviest grades; that is why the recipe tells you to add 2 pounds of sugar back to the juice to bring the sweetness up.
- Do not boilThis is the hinge. Heat is allowed only to dissolve the sugar, and even then gently. Boiling drives off the volatile aroma of the plum juice and dulls the fresh acidity that makes the drink taste of fruit rather than of syrup.
- "The large stream only"Fountain taps had a fine stream for mixing and a coarse stream for filling. The coarse stream was used here because it disturbs the syrup less and keeps the carbonation; the gentle stir with a long soda spoon finishes the job without flattening the glass.
- There is no champagne in it"Champagne" in fountain language meant the style of the drink, pale, dry and sparkling. The recipe is entirely non-alcoholic.
- ServingSmall, thin tumblers are specified, though no reason is given. Chill both syrup and soda water hard; a warm syrup kills the fizz on contact.
The American soda fountain of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century ran on syrup formulas like this one, sold by the gallon to druggists who dispensed drinks from a marble counter. "Champagne" syrups were part of a whole family of fountain drinks named after alcoholic ones, sparkling, dry-tasting and respectable enough for a temperance-minded public. The "American Plum Juice" called for here is capitalised much like the proprietary "American Fruit Acid" beside it, so it may well be a trade product rather than simply pressed plums; either way its sharpness suited a drink meant to taste dry rather than sweet. The closing note, "this is a seller," is aimed squarely at the man behind the counter: these books were trade manuals, and a formula earned its place by moving glasses.