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Sarsaparilla
Cherry Solid.
Make a syrup of ½ ounce ginger essence, ½ dram tincture whisky, 1 ounce glycerin, 2 ounces solution acid phosphates, enough syrup to make 1½ gallon and sufficient foam. Draw ½ ounces in 8-ounce glass, filling with shaved ice and carbonated water. Add cherry, and serve solid with straws.
A fountain formula written for a dispenser working from a bulk syrup, not for a single glass. The quantities make roughly a gallon and a half of stock syrup, so the first job is deciding whether to scale it down.
- The unitsA fluid ounce is 2 tablespoons; a fluid dram is one-eighth of that, about 3.7 mL or three-quarters of a teaspoon. A gallon and a half is 192 fluid ounces, and at 1½ ounces per glass the batch yields 128 drinks.
- Scaling to one glassDivide everything by 128 and the flavourings become vanishingly small — the half dram of whisky tincture works out to a fraction of a single drop per glass. If you want a single serving, make a quarter or an eighth of the batch rather than trying to measure the original amounts down.
- Solution acid phosphatesThis is acid phosphate, a dilute phosphoric acid preparation sold to fountains under names like Horsford's. It supplies sourness without fruit acid and is still made for the cocktail and soda trade; it is not the same thing as phosphoric acid concentrate and should not be improvised from one.
- "Sufficient foam"Foam meant a proprietary foaming solution, usually based on quillaia (soap bark) or saponin extract, added so the drink held a head under the carbonated stream. Quillaia extract is still permitted as a beverage foaming agent; egg white or aquafaba will do the same job in a glass-at-a-time version.
- GlycerinFood-grade glycerine, used here for body and a faint sweetness that keeps a thin syrup from tasting watery. One ounce across a gallon and a half is a texture adjustment, not a flavour.
- The unnamed syrupThe recipe says only "enough syrup"; given the name this was probably cherry syrup, assumed to be on the operator's rail. Made up with plain syrup, the drink would taste of ginger and acid, with the cherry only as garnish.
- What "solid" meansThe recipe fills the glass with shaved ice, so a "solid" appears to have been served packed tight enough for the straw to stand in it, closer to a slush than a soda. Shave or crush the ice finely; cubes will not pack and the drink separates.
- Assembly orderSyrup first, then ice, then carbonated water poured down the side of the glass. Adding the water last preserves the carbonation and lifts the foam.
Fountain manuals of this kind were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the home cook, which is why the measurements arrive in drams and gallons and why a recipe filed under Sarsaparilla turns out to be a cherry drink. Acid phosphate, the sour note here, was one of the major flavours of the American fountain from the 1870s through Prohibition: it gave a bracing tartness that citrus could not, and "phosphates" became a whole category of drink alongside sodas, egg creams and these thick, ice-packed "solids". The half dram of whisky tincture is a survival of the fountain's descent from the pharmacy, where flavoured tinctures and essences sat on the same shelves as the medicines.