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Rose Punch
Two ounces grape juice, 2 ounces sweet cream, 1 spoonful ice cream, 3 dashes of bitters, shake thoroughly, strain, pour back into shaker and add soda to fill glass, throw as in mixing egg drinks. Serve paper napkin and place nutmeg handy.
A fountain drink built in a shaker and finished with carbonated water. It reads oddly because it assumes a marble counter with a draft arm and a working ice cream cabinet.
- Ounces means fluid ouncesFountain measures were liquid: 2 oz grape juice and 2 oz cream are 1/4 cup each. The recipe only says "fill glass," so any tall soda glass will do; it serves one.
- A spoonful of ice creamA spoonful, not a full modern scoop; the quantity is left to the server. The flavour is unspecified, and the ice cream's job here is body and foam rather than sweetness.
- BittersProbably aromatic bitters of the Angostura type. Three dashes is a small amount, on the order of a third of a teaspoon; the drink reads as an imitation of a bar punch and the bitters are what give it that character.
- Watch the creamGrape juice is acidic, so cream left standing in the shaker with it can curdle. Shake, strain and carbonate at once rather than mixing ahead.
- SodaFountain soda water was drawn cold and hard-carbonated. Chilled seltzer from a siphon or a fresh bottle is the closest match; flat water leaves the drink thin, since the fizz is doing the lifting.
- "Throw as in mixing egg drinks"Throwing means pouring the mixture back and forth between two vessels held well apart, from a height, to aerate it. It builds the same foam head a shaken egg drink gets, without shaking the carbonation flat.
- Nutmeg and napkinThe nutmeg is grated over the foam at the counter, to the customer's preference, which is why it is only "handy" rather than measured. Grate it fresh; pre-ground nutmeg smells of nothing by comparison.
Soda fountain manuals of the early twentieth century are full of drinks called punches, cocktails and fizzes that contain no spirits at all, and this one shows the trick plainly: grape juice for colour, cream and ice cream for the texture of something richer, and a few dashes of aromatic bitters for the herbal edge a mixed drink was expected to have. Commercially bottled unfermented grape juice became widely available in American groceries and fountains in the decades around 1900, and it was promoted heavily to temperance households, which made it the natural base for imitation bar drinks. There is no rose in it. The instruction to set out a paper napkin and leave the nutmeg within reach is a reminder that these books were written for counter staff serving a customer in front of them, not for a cook alone in a kitchen.