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Prepared Milk
The prepared milk prescribed for the dispensing of many of the hot drinks is made by taking 1 pint of pure milk, 4 ounces condensed milk, ⅛ ounce extract vanilla, and 5 grains of bicarbonate of soda, mixing.
A fountain base rather than a finished drink: a sweetened, stabilized milk kept ready to be dipped into hot chocolate, malted milk and similar winter counter drinks. The proportions are easy to reproduce, but a few of the units need translating.
- 5 grains of bicarbonateAn apothecaries' grain is about 65 milligrams, so 5 grains is roughly 0.3 g — a scant pinch, well under an eighth of a teaspoon. Its job is to keep the milk from curdling when it meets hot acidic fruit or chocolate syrups; more than a trace gives a soapy, flat taste.
- Condensed milkIn a fountain formula of this period this most likely means sweetened condensed milk, the thick canned product, rather than evaporated milk. Four ounces is a bit over a quarter of a standard 14 oz can by weight, about 1/3 cup. Evaporated milk would not give the same sweetness or body.
- ⅛ ounce vanillaFountain formulas usually measured extracts by fluid ounce, which makes this about 3.5 ml, or ¾ teaspoon. If read as a weight it works out to almost the same thing, so either reading lands in the same place.
- Pure milkPeriod trade language for fresh, unadulterated whole milk, in contrast to the watered or skimmed milk fountains were often accused of using. Use whole pasteurized milk; the small amount of condensed milk supplies the extra richness the original assumed.
- MixingStir the soda into a little of the fresh milk first so it dissolves fully, then work in the condensed milk before adding the rest. Dropping the thick condensed milk straight into a pint of cold milk leaves streaks that never quite disperse.
- Yield and useMakes a little over 1¼ pints, enough for roughly seven to ten hot drinks at 2–3 ounces of base each, topped with hot water, chocolate or malted syrup.
- KeepingThe recipe says nothing about storage, though a standing base like this would have needed to be kept cold and made up frequently. Refrigerate at or below 40F and use within a day or two; the added sugar does nothing to preserve it, and the soda gradually dulls the flavor.
Hot drinks were the soda fountain's answer to winter, when nobody wanted iced phosphates and the marble counter otherwise sat idle from November to March. Rather than heat and sweeten milk to order for each glass, dispensers kept a standing "prepared milk" that could be ladled out and finished with chocolate, malted milk, beef tea flavorings or plain hot water. The condensed milk gave sweetness and a heavier mouthfeel than fresh milk alone — canned sweetened condensed milk, generally traced to Gail Borden's mid-nineteenth-century process, was by 1900 a cheap and utterly ordinary store item — while the pinch of bicarbonate was insurance against the curdling that ruins a hot milk drink the moment acid syrup hits it. The formula is a good example of what fountain manuals actually taught: not cooking so much as batching, standardization and speed behind a counter.