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Sarsaparilla Syrup (Simple Syrup gallon American)
Simple Syrup, 1 gallon; American Extract Sarsaparilla, 1 ounce; American Sarsaparilla Color, 1 ounce; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce. Use a sponge on the counter rather than towels.
This is a fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: a gallon batch of flavored syrup meant to be drawn an ounce or so at a time and finished with carbonated water at the counter. Nearly every named ingredient is a proprietary trade product from a supply house, so the work of making it today is mostly a matter of substitution.
- Simple syrup at the fountainNot the light 1:1 syrup of a modern bar. Fountain simple syrups were generally run heavy, commonly in the region of 6 to 7 lb of sugar per gallon, close to saturation, which would help them keep on an open counter and gives soda its body. A thin syrup will taste watery when cut with charged water.
- "American" extractsAmerican Extract Sarsaparilla, American Sarsaparilla Color and American Soda Foam read as branded goods bought in from a supply house rather than compounded by the dispenser; they are not products you can buy now. Any current sarsaparilla or root beer concentrate can stand in, but its strength will differ, so start at half the stated ounce per gallon and taste.
- What sarsaparilla extract actually wasRarely much Smilax root. Commercial extracts leaned on sassafras, wintergreen, birch, licorice and vanilla. Sassafras root bark contains safrole, which the FDA prohibited as a food additive in 1960; modern extracts are made safrole-free, so buy a current product rather than compounding from raw sassafras.
- Sarsaparilla colorAlmost certainly caramel color, sold separately because the extract alone gave a pale, unconvincing drink. Caramel color, or a small amount of dark caramel cooked from sugar, does the same job without changing the flavor much; add it a little at a time, since modern caramel colors are far stronger than the ounce per gallon here implies.
- Soda foamA saponin solution, historically an extract of quillaia (soap bark) or yucca, added so the drink threw a persistent head under the charged-water stream. Quillaia extract is still permitted in soft drinks at limited levels and is sold to home brewers; it is the one component with no ordinary kitchen substitute.
- Proportions to the glassThe counter standard was 1 to 1.25 fl oz of syrup drawn into the glass, then 6 to 8 oz of carbonated water added under pressure and stirred once. A gallon of syrup makes roughly 100 to 128 drinks.
- Keeping itA syrup this heavy resists spoilage but flavor oils fade. Bottle it full to the neck, cap tight and refrigerate; expect the aromatics to flatten within a couple of months, well before the sugar is in any danger.
- The spongeThe last line is counter practice, not part of the formula: a damp sponge in place of a shared towel for wiping down the counter. Modern practice runs the other way, since a sponge left wet on a counter is a better home for bacteria than a laundered cloth.
Sarsaparilla syrup sat on American fountains from the mid-nineteenth century as a holdover from the patent-medicine trade, where preparations of Smilax root were sold as blood purifiers and spring tonics; the soda counter was, after all, the front of a drugstore, and the pharmacist who compounded the tonic also drew the soda. By the time formula books like this one were printed, the medicinal claim had faded and sarsaparilla was simply a flavor, close kin to root beer and built from the same palette of sassafras, wintergreen and licorice. What the recipe shows most clearly is how industrialized the fountain had become: the dispenser was no longer extracting roots but measuring ounces of branded extract, color and foam into a gallon of sugar syrup, with the supply house doing the actual flavor work.