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Raspberry Royal (One-half glass shaved ice)
One-half glass shaved ice, ½ ounce raspberry vinegar syrup, ½ ounce raspberry juice, 1 ounce crushed raspberry fruit syrup. Draw solid, sufficient soda to fill, stir gently.
A fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: three raspberry preparations of different character layered over ice and lengthened with carbonated water. It works at home with a soda siphon or a bottle of well-chilled seltzer.
- The glassFountain glasses of the period varied, commonly somewhere between about 8 and 12 ounces. With half the glass given to shaved ice and two ounces of syrup and juice below it, the soda is drawn only to fill what remains; the whole makes one drink.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesHalf an ounce is a tablespoon; one ounce is two tablespoons. The flavouring adds up to two ounces of syrup and juice together, which is sweet by modern taste and can be cut back without harming the structure.
- Raspberry vinegar syrupThis is a shrub: raspberries steeped in vinegar, strained, and sweetened. It is sold again today as drinking vinegar or shrub syrup. It supplies acid that keeps the drink from tasting like melted jam, which may be why the formula draws on three raspberry preparations rather than one.
- Raspberry juice vs. crushed fruit syrup"Juice" here means unsweetened or lightly sweetened strained juice; "crushed fruit syrup" is a heavy sugar syrup carrying pulp and seeds. The pulp is what gives the finished glass its body and cloudiness, so do not substitute a clear cordial for it.
- "Draw solid"Fountain dispensers had a coarse stream and a fine, aerated one. Drawing solid means the heavy stream, which delivers carbonated water without whipping up foam. At home, tilt the glass and pour seltzer down the side in one steady go.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved or finely crushed ice chills the syrup on contact and lets it disperse without much stirring. Cubes will leave the syrup sitting in a sweet layer at the bottom.
- Stir gently, onceStir gently -- The instruction is doing real work. Vigorous stirring drives off the carbonation the drink depends on, so keep the stirring light.
Raspberry vinegar was a familiar American household preparation before it reached the soda fountain: berries macerated in vinegar, strained, boiled with sugar, and bottled as a summer refresher stirred into cold water, and also given to the sick as a throat drink. Fountain dispensers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried it as a stock syrup, where it gave sweet fruit syrups a spine of acid. Drinks named "Royal" turn up in fountain manuals of the era, and in this instance the name attaches to a plain raspberry soda built up with juice and a shrub. Drugstore fountains flourished in the same decades as the temperance movement, and formulas like this one gave the soda clerk composed drinks made without spirits.