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Sherry Cobbler Syrup
Mix equal quantities of good sherry and simple syrup, and flavor with either fresh lime juice, 4 ounces to the gallon, or lemons sliced whole, 4 to the gallon. When lemons are used it is well to macerate over night. Serve in a mineral glass with a dash of phosphate, shaved ice and a straw.
A soda-fountain syrup rather than a mixed drink: the sherry and sugar are batched in advance, then drawn like any other fountain flavor. Everything here scales down cleanly.
- Scale it downThe gallon is a fountain batch. A workable home version is 1 cup sherry, 1 cup simple syrup, and either 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice or half a lemon sliced thin, which holds the original's proportions closely enough.
- Simple syrupFountain simple syrup of this era was heavy — roughly 2 parts sugar to 1 part water by weight, near saturation, because it had to sweeten a glass of ice and soda. A 1:1 syrup will taste thin by comparison.
- Acid phosphateThe "dash of phosphate" is acid phosphate, a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, which adds sourness and a dry mineral bite without the fruitiness of citrus. It is sold again by cocktail suppliers; a few drops of citric acid solution is the nearest substitute, though it reads as more purely sour.
- Mineral glassA tall soda glass filled with shaved ice. Shaved ice, not cubes -- the point is a slush the straw can pull through, and cubes leave the drink strong at the bottom and watery on top.
- Macerating the lemonsSliced whole lemons standing overnight will give up peel oil along with juice. The recipe does not say to strain them, but it is worth doing the next day, as pith left in a sweet syrup will turn it bitter.
- Which sherryThe recipe says only "good sherry." A medium style, amontillado or a dry oloroso, works well here. Cream sherry makes the syrup cloying once the simple syrup is added; fino is easily lost under the sugar and ice.
- Keeping itUnlike a plain sugar syrup, this contains wine and fresh juice and will not keep on a shelf. Refrigerate and use within a week; the sherry also oxidizes and flattens quickly once opened.
The sherry cobbler was one of the most popular American drinks of the mid-nineteenth century, built on three things the United States had in unusual abundance: cheap imported sherry, cane sugar, and ice. It is generally credited with popularizing the drinking straw, since the shaved ice made a straw the only practical way to get at the liquid — Dickens has Martin Chuzzlewit marvel at exactly this arrangement in 1844. Its appearance in a soda book is a sign of how porous the line between bar and fountain was around the turn of the century: the same shaved ice, the same tall glass, the same straw, with acid phosphate standing in for the bar's bitters and citrus. Fountains sold wine and sherry syrups openly until Prohibition, after which the cobbler survived in soda books mainly as a fruit-and-phosphate drink with the wine quietly dropped.