Home › At the Fountain › Queen's Favorite (Orange syrup ounce grape juice)
Queen's Favorite (Orange syrup ounce grape juice)
Orange syrup, 1 ounce; grape juice, 1 ounce; ice ⅔, dash lemon juice and Jamaica ginger; soda to fill glass.
A two-syrup fountain drink written in the shorthand a working dispenser could read at a glance. Everything hinges on the carbonation: the sweet base goes in first, and the soda water is drawn forcefully enough to mix the glass without stirring.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesFountain formulas were measured with a pony jigger or a graduated syrup measure, so 1 ounce is 2 tablespoons. "Soda to fill glass" implies a standard fountain glass, but the recipe does not specify a size.
- "Ice ⅔"Fill the glass about two-thirds with ice. Fountain work generally used shaved or finely cracked ice, which chilled quickly and packed closely, though the recipe does not specify the form.
- Orange syrupA sweetened orange flavoring syrup, roughly the consistency of a bar simple syrup, not orange juice. A commercial orange soda syrup or a 2:1 sugar-and-orange-juice syrup with a little zest stands in accurately.
- Grape juiceAt a fountain of this period this most likely means unfermented Concord grape juice of the Welch's type, darker and more perfumed than modern white grape juice. Use a dark Concord juice if you want the intended colour and flavour.
- Jamaica gingerA concentrated alcoholic tincture of ginger sold as a pharmacy extract; a "dash" is a few drops, not a splash. Modern ginger extract or a scant quarter teaspoon of ginger syrup gives the same warm finish, but overdose it and the drink turns medicinal.
- The sodaDraw carbonated water in a coarse stream to lift and blend the syrups, then finish with a fine stream to build the head. A siphon or a hard pour from freshly opened seltzer does the same job; a limp pour leaves the syrup sitting on the bottom.
- YieldOne glass. Scaling up is not worth it, since the drink loses its sparkle within a minute or two of being built.
Fountain books of this period ran hundreds of named combinations, most of them variations on two or three syrups plus soda, and the names were pure merchandising. The formula's real period marker is Jamaica ginger, a strong ginger tincture originally compounded as a pharmacy carminative and kept behind the counter at drugstore soda fountains, where medicine and refreshment shared the same marble slab. Because it was mostly alcohol, it was drunk on its own during Prohibition under the name "jake," and adulterated batches sold in 1930 caused thousands of cases of paralysis, which effectively ended its career as a household flavoring. The grape juice is equally telling: commercial unfermented grape juice was promoted from the 1890s onward as a temperance drink, and fountains took it up quickly as a sweet, colorful base that needed no explanation.