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Sarsaparilla Syrup
American Concentrated and Soluble Sarsaparilla Extract, ¼ ounce; Simple Syrup, 1 gallon; American Sarsaparilla Color, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain formula, not a household one: it makes a gallon of flavoring syrup to be drawn an ounce at a time under carbonated water. Everything hinges on the proprietary extract, which no longer exists in the form the book assumes.
- The extract is a trade product"American Concentrated and Soluble Sarsaparilla Extract" was a branded soda-fountain concentrate sold by supply houses, and its strength is unknowable today. Modern sarsaparilla or root beer concentrates vary enormously; start with a fraction of the quantity the maker recommends per gallon and adjust, rather than trusting the quarter ounce here.
- Sassafras and safrolePeriod sarsaparilla and root beer extracts were commonly built on oil of sassafras rather than on sarsaparilla root. Safrole, its principal constituent, was prohibited as a food additive in the United States in 1960; current commercial extracts use safrole-free sassafras or a compounded flavor, which is what you will be buying.
- What fountain simple syrup meantNot the light 1:1 syrup of a modern bar. Soda-fountain standard was near-saturated, roughly a pound of sugar to a half pint of water, which is on the order of 7 lb sugar per gallon of finished syrup. A thinner syrup will taste watery once carbonated water is added.
- The color"American Sarsaparilla Color" was in all likelihood a caramel coloring, as period fountain colors generally were. An ounce per gallon of a modern caramel color is a great deal; add it a few drops at a time until the syrup reads dark reddish-brown, since it contributes a faint bitterness at high doses.
- Ambiguous measureThe book does not say whether the ounce of color and quarter ounce of extract are by weight or by fluid measure. Fountain practice of the period used both, and for a liquid concentrate fluid ounces are the likelier reading.
- Yield and serviceA gallon of syrup at the usual fountain draw of 1 to 1.5 fl oz per glass gives roughly 85 to 128 drinks. Fill the glass with cold carbonated water, or dilute about one part syrup to six parts soda water and adjust to taste.
- KeepingA heavy sugar syrup is largely self-preserving, but at home make less than a gallon, keep it refrigerated in a sealed bottle, and discard it if it clouds or throws a film.
Sarsaparilla is the root of several Smilax vines from Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean, imported into Europe from the sixteenth century onward and sold through the nineteenth as a "blood purifier" — the backbone of countless patent medicines and of the druggist's stock. American soda fountains grew directly out of pharmacies, and sarsaparilla made the short trip from the medicine shelf to the syrup pump with its therapeutic reputation intact, which is part of why it sold. The irony is that the flavor most drinkers recognized as sarsaparilla came largely from sassafras, wintergreen, vanilla and spice oils compounded into the extract, with little or no actual Smilax in the glass. Formulas like this one, giving only a branded concentrate, a syrup base and a coloring, show how far the fountain trade had already moved from the apothecary's decoctions toward assembling drinks from bought-in flavor houses' products.