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Scorcher's Delight
One-half glass shaved ice, 5 dashes liquid phosphate, 3 dashes compound tincture of cardamom, 1½ ounces vanilla syrup. Add soda, stir, strain and serve with straws.
A fountain drink of the acid-phosphate era, built in a mixing glass and strained into a serving glass. Two of its four ingredients are druggist's stock rather than grocer's, which is the main obstacle to making it now.
- Acid phosphate"Liquid phosphate" is acid phosphate, a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts. It gives a dry, mineral tartness with none of the fruit character of citrus. It is made again commercially for the cocktail trade; there is no true substitute, though a few drops of lemon juice will at least supply acidity.
- Compound tincture of cardamomA pharmacy preparation of the period: cardamom with cinnamon, caraway and cochineal in diluted alcohol, sweetened with glycerin. It was classed as an aromatic carminative and was much used as a flavouring and colouring adjuvant. If you cannot find it, an alcoholic cardamom tincture plus a trace of cinnamon comes closest, but the drink will be paler.
- A dashAt the fountain a dash was one tip of a stoppered dash bottle, roughly 1/8 teaspoon. Five dashes of phosphate is a little over half a teaspoon; three of the tincture, under half. These are seasoning quantities, and the drink turns harsh if you pour freehand.
- Vanilla syrupFountain vanilla syrup was a heavy sugar syrup, about two parts sugar to one of water, flavoured with vanilla extract and often a little caramel. Modern coffee-bar vanilla syrup is thinner and sweeter in a different register; expect to adjust.
- "Add soda"Plain carbonated water from the fountain. Use the coldest, most heavily carbonated seltzer you have; the recipe adds it last, then stirs.
- Strain and serveThe shaved ice stays behind in the mixing glass; the drink goes into a clean soda glass without it, so the finished drink is not diluted further as it stands.
- YieldOne drink, roughly eight to ten ounces depending on the glass. It is a soda, not a syrup base, and does not keep.
A "scorcher" in the 1890s was a cyclist who rode flat out, crouched low over the handlebars. This is a phosphate drink, the fountain's answer to the lemon soda: acid phosphate was sold to druggists as a tonic acidulant and became the standard sour note behind the counter, since it added bite without the cloudiness or the fruit flavour of citrus. The compound tincture of cardamom marks how close the soda fountain still stood to the dispensary in this period. It was an official preparation of the United States Pharmacopoeia, kept on the shelf for compounding. Drinks like this one faded with the phosphate itself, which had largely left the counter by the middle of the twentieth century.