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Siberian Flip (American Orange Syrup ounce)
American Orange Syrup, 1 ounce; American Pineapple Syrup, 1 ounce; Angostura Bitters, 2 drops; Phosphate, 2 dashes; Sweet Cream, 1 ounce. Soda, fine and coarse stream to fill glass.
If your fountain is small, serve the well-known popular flavors. Do not attempt to introduce new drinks.
A soda-fountain formula written for a dispenser working behind a marble counter with syrup pumps, an acid bottle and a two-stream draft arm. It translates to a home kitchen without much trouble once the trade vocabulary is decoded.
- The hinge: acid and creamAcid phosphate poured straight onto sweet cream can curdle it. The recipe gives no order of assembly, but it is safer to draw the syrups, bitters and phosphate into the glass first, add the cream, then break the whole thing up immediately with the coarse stream so it emulsifies rather than clabbering.
- Phosphate"Phosphate" here is acid phosphate solution — a dilute mix of phosphoric acid and calcium, magnesium and potassium salts kept in a dasher bottle at the fountain. It gives a dry, mineral tartness quite unlike citrus. It is made again by specialty suppliers; two dashes is roughly a scant quarter teaspoon.
- Fine and coarse streamFountain arms carried two draws. The coarse stream is a hard jet used to agitate and mix; the fine stream is a gentle spray used to top off with minimal foam. With a siphon or a bottle, splash in a short hard pour to combine, then fill slowly.
- American syrups"American Orange" and "American Pineapple" were house or branded fountain syrups, sweeter and more concentrated than a modern juice. Use a proper 2:1 fruit syrup rather than juice, or the drink will be thin and sour.
- Ounces and glassThe measures are fluid ounces: 1 oz each of the two syrups and 1 oz cream, about 3 oz of base before the soda. The recipe does not name a glass; period soda glasses generally ran somewhere in the 8 to 12 oz range. It is a single serving and should be drunk at once.
- Cream"Sweet cream" means unsoured cream, as opposed to the sour cream of the period, not a sweetened one. Light cream or half-and-half is closer to fountain practice than heavy cream, which will sit heavily under the soda.
- The last two sentencesThey are trade advice to the operator, not part of the method — a warning that a small fountain cannot carry the syrup inventory for novelty drinks. Ignore them and make the flip.
"Flip" is an old tavern word: a heated mixture of beer, rum and sugar, foamed by plunging a red-hot iron loggerhead into the mug; egg is often said to belong to later, chiefly American, versions. When the soda fountain took over the social ground the saloon had held, dispensers borrowed the vocabulary of the bar wholesale — fizzes, frappés, sours — and rebuilt the drinks around syrup, cream, egg and carbonated water instead of spirits. A fountain flip generally meant something with egg or cream in it, worked to a froth by the soda stream rather than by an iron. The Angostura bitters here is another borrowing, and one of the few places alcohol survived in the glass; the "Siberian" is decoration, of a piece with the Klondikes, Egyptians and Manhattans that filled fountain manuals in the decades on either side of 1900.