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Soda Toddy, Hot
Two drams lemon juice, 1 ounce lemon syrup, 1 dram aromatic bitters, enough hot water to fill an 8-ounce glass. Sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.
A soda-fountain hot drink, built to order in the glass. The only difficulty is the apothecary measure, which the fountain man read off a graduated tumbler.
- Drams and ouncesThese are fluid measures from the pharmacy counter: one fluid dram is 1/8 fl oz, roughly 3.7 mL or a scant 3/4 teaspoon. So two drams of lemon juice is about 1 1/2 teaspoons, and one dram of bitters is about 3/4 teaspoon.
- That much bittersThree-quarters of a teaspoon is on the order of four to eight dashes from a modern Angostura-style bottle — still well more than a cocktail would take, but this is an 8-ounce drink and the bitters are carrying the whole flavour. Reduce it if the brand you have is heavy on clove and gentian.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrups were generally a thick sugar syrup flavoured with lemon juice and often oil of lemon, sweeter and more concentrated than bottled lemonade. Two parts sugar to one part water, dissolved and flavoured with juice and a little grated zest, comes close. One ounce is two tablespoons.
- Water temperatureFill with water at about 180F rather than a hard boil. Boiling water flattens the fresh lemon juice and drives off the volatile oils in the bitters, which are the point of the drink.
- Warm the glassAn 8-ounce glass takes roughly 6 ounces of water after the syrup, juice and bitters. Rinse it with hot water first or the drink arrives lukewarm, and use a glass rated for heat.
- NutmegGrate it over the surface at the moment of serving; pre-ground nutmeg has little to give. Cinnamon works, as the original allows.
- YieldOne glass, one serving.
A "toddy" properly means spirits, sugar, spice and hot water, and the soda fountain — at some point in its history, though just when is hard to pin down — cheerfully borrowed the name for a version with the spirits left out — the aromatic bitters supply the bite and a token trace of alcohol. Fountains were attached to drugstores, and hot drinks like this one are often said to have filled the dead winter months when nobody wanted ice cream soda. Aromatic bitters sat comfortably in that setting, being sold as a stomach remedy as much as a flavouring, which let a hot toddy at the fountain pass as something between a treat and a dose.