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Raspberry Cordial
One ounce raspberry syrup, ½ ounce raspberry vinegar, fill in 8-ounce glass with coarse stream.
A two-ingredient fountain drink that depends entirely on the quality of the syrup and the force of the carbonated water. It takes about fifteen seconds to build.
- The measuresFountain ounces are fluid ounces: 1 oz syrup is 2 tablespoons, ½ oz vinegar is 1 tablespoon. An 8-ounce glass leaves roughly 6½ ounces of soda water, so the finished drink is about 1 part flavouring to 4 parts water.
- "Coarse stream"Fountain draft arms carried two taps — a fine stream that foamed and a coarse (or heavy) stream that delivered a full, forceful column of carbonated water. The coarse stream is called for here because it does the mixing; a slow pour leaves the syrup sitting at the bottom. Use a soda siphon or a bottle of well-chilled seltzer poured hard from a few inches above the glass.
- Raspberry vinegarNot a salad vinegar. This is the old drinking shrub: raspberries steeped in vinegar, strained, and sweetened with sugar to a thin syrup. Modern gourmet raspberry vinegars are unsweetened and far sharper — if you use one, cut the half ounce back or the drink will pucker.
- Raspberry syrupFountain syrup was a heavy sugar stock, considerably thicker and sweeter than the thin cordial sold as a mixer today. A thinner syrup gives a watery drink; compensate with a little more, or reduce a commercial syrup slightly.
- IceThe original assumes fountain water chilled through a coil, so no ice is mentioned and none should be added — ice dilutes an 8-ounce glass badly. Chill the glass, the syrup and the soda water instead.
- Order of buildingSyrup and vinegar into the empty glass first, then the water. Reversing it wastes the carbonation and leaves the acid streaked through the drink.
- YieldOne 8-ounce glass, one serving. It scales straight up for a pitcher, though you lose the fizz; add the soda water at the glass.
Raspberry vinegar is older than the soda fountain: shrubs — fruit steeped in vinegar and sweetened — appear in eighteenth-century English cookery, and diluted with cold water they were drunk in the fields and given to the sick long before carbonation was cheap. When the drug-store fountain spread through American refreshment in the later nineteenth century, it took up the old shrub: the dispenser already had raspberry syrup in the rail for a plain raspberry soda, and adding a half ounce of the vinegar made something sharper. Formularies of this kind were written for the working soda clerk, which is why the instruction is a single line — it assumes a chilled draft arm with two streams and a dispenser who has built the drink before.