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Robinhood Sundae
One-half pound marron glaces chopped fine; ½ gallon maple syrup; ½ pound grated nuts. This will make nearly ⅔ of a gallon. Mix well and pour ladleful over ice cream. Top off with whipped cream.
This is a fountain formula: a bulk topping mixed once and ladled over ice cream through a shift, not a single dessert. Scale it down hard unless you are serving a crowd.
- Scale firstHalf a gallon of maple syrup plus a pound of solids yields roughly two and a half quarts of sauce — dozens of servings. A tenth of the recipe (about 3/4 cup syrup, 3/4 oz marrons, 3/4 oz nuts) makes enough for four or five sundaes.
- Marrons glacésCandied chestnuts, sold in jars or foil-wrapped in specialty and Italian groceries, usually around the winter holidays. Broken pieces or marron paste are sold cheaper and work fine here since everything is chopped fine anyway. There is no true substitute; candied ginger or chopped dates change the sundae into something else.
- "Grated nuts"Nuts reduced almost to a coarse meal, as a rotary grater would produce. A few pulses in a food processor gets there; do not go so far that the oil releases and the mass pastes up. Walnuts or almonds suit maple best.
- The syrup"Maple syrup" in a 1900s fountain manual may have meant a maple-flavoured sugar syrup rather than pure sap syrup. Pure dark syrup gives the better flavour but may run thinner; if you want it to cling, reduce it by a quarter and cool before mixing.
- A ladlefulFountain ladles were commonly around an ounce, sometimes larger for a heavy sundae. Two tablespoons over a scoop is a reasonable reading of "ladleful."
- Keeping itSugar concentration is high, but the nut oils go rancid within a few weeks. Refrigerate and use within a month; the syrup will thicken cold, so let it stand at room temperature before serving.
Soda fountain manuals of the 1900s and 1910s named sundaes after anything topical — plays, songs, popular novels — and Robin Hood was in circulation in that period, including Reginald De Koven's 1890 comic opera and boys' adventure retellings. No origin for this name is documented; the nuts and the maple may simply have suggested it. What the formula shows is how the fountain worked: syrups and crushes were built in bulk and assembled to order, so a "recipe" is a batch of topping with a note on the ladle. Marrons glacés were a genuine luxury import, and putting them in a fountain sundae borrowed the prestige of the French confectioner's counter for a five- or ten-cent glass.