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Rapid Transit
Tea syrup, 1 pint; vanilla syrup, 8 ounces; solution acid phosphate, ½ ounce; foam extract, ½ ounce; simple syrup, 3 pints. Color with caramel.
This is a fountain formula, not a drink: it makes a bulk bottle of flavoring syrup that gets an ounce or so per glass, topped with carbonated water. The proportions are given by volume, and the pints and ounces are US measures.
- What the quantities come to1 pint tea syrup + 8 fl oz vanilla + 3 pints simple syrup, plus the two half-ounces, gives 73 fl oz, about 4½ pints of finished syrup. At the standard fountain pour of 1 to 1½ fl oz per glass that is roughly 50 to 70 drinks.
- Tea syrupNot sold as such anymore. Fountain manuals of the period give formulas along the lines of steeping strong black tea, straining it, and dissolving sugar in it while warm; proportions vary from book to book. Made fresh it is cloudy and tannic, and some formulas direct that it be left to settle and drawn off clear.
- Simple syrup at fountain strengthFountain simple syrup was heavier than the 1:1 syrup a bar uses today, period formulas running from about a pound of sugar to the pint of water up towards saturation. A thinner syrup will taste watery once soda water is added and will keep less well.
- Solution acid phosphateA dilute phosphoric acid preparation, still made for soda work. It contributes sourness without the fruit character of citric acid or lemon. Citric acid is not a substitute in kind; it will read as lemonade.
- Foam extractIts function was head retention. Period foam extracts were built on saponin from quillaia (soapbark) or on egg albumen; quillaia extract is still permitted as a foaming agent in soft drinks but only at low levels, and it is not a general grocery item. Half an ounce in five pints is the sort of trace dose intended.
- Caramel for colorPlain caramel coloring, added a few drops at a time until the syrup reads the brown of strong tea. It is there for appearance only — adding enough to taste it will make the syrup bitter.
- ServingDraw 1 to 1½ fl oz of syrup into a glass, fill with carbonated water under coarse stream so the foam extract works, and stir once. Serve cold; the acid phosphate is what makes it taste brisk rather than sweet.
- KeepingA sugar syrup this heavy is fairly stable, but the tea base carries tannins and will go dull and dusty-tasting within a couple of weeks. Bottle it full, cap tight, and refrigerate.
Soda fountain dispensers named their house mixtures after whatever felt new, and in the 1890s and 1900s nothing felt newer than rapid transit — the elevated lines, cable and electric streetcars, and the subway schemes that ran through American city politics for a decade before New York's opened in 1904. The recipe itself carries no date, so where it sits in that stretch is guesswork. A drink called "Rapid Transit" was selling speed and modernity, and the formula matches: tea and vanilla over acid phosphate made a quick, brisk, faintly medicinal glass rather than a rich one. Tea syrup shows up in fountain manuals of this period, and it is easy enough to see the appeal — it gave caffeine and a bitter edge cheaply, and the caramel let it look the part.