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Spa Fizz
Shaved Ice, ½ tumblerful.
Lemon, juice of Strawberry Syrup, 2 ounces; Orange Syrup, 1 ounce.
Shake well. Draw soda water with large stream.
A fountain formula written for a soda jerk with a syrup rail and a draft arm, not for a home cook. Translated into kitchen terms it is a lemon-and-berry sherbet cooler finished with hard-carbonated water.
- The tumblerA fountain tumbler of this period held somewhere in the range of 8 to 12 ounces, so half a tumbler of shaved ice is roughly 4 to 6 ounces by volume. Shaved is not cubed: the fine texture is what lets the syrups distribute in a few shakes.
- Lemon, juice ofThe original gives no number. About half an ounce, the juice of roughly half a medium lemon, is a sensible starting point. Start there rather than juicing a whole one.
- Fountain syrup is not simple syrupCommercial strawberry and orange syrups of the era were considerably heavier in sugar than a modern 1:1. If you substitute a thinner syrup the drink will taste flat and watery; reduce the soda or increase the syrup accordingly.
- "Large stream"Fountains had a coarse stream and a fine stream. Coarse meant a full, forceful jet that both filled and mixed the glass; fine was for delicate drinks and for building foam. At home, pour chilled seltzer briskly straight down the middle.
- Shake well, then drawThe shake is done with the ice, juice and syrups only. Carbonated water is added last and never shaken, or the drink loses its gas and overflows.
- ServingServe with a straw and a long spoon at once. Shaved ice melts fast and the drink is designed to be drunk while it is still cutting-sharp with acid and carbonation.
The name points back to Spa, the Belgian town whose mineral springs are generally said to have given English the common noun, and behind it to the whole nineteenth-century business of imitating spring water with manufactured carbonic gas. American soda fountains grew directly out of that trade: druggists sold artificial mineral waters as a health article first and sweetened them into a confection afterward, which is why so many fountain drinks carry the vocabulary of the water-cure. By the time formulas like this one were being printed, the health claim was mostly decorative and the appeal was the combination of acid, sugar and gas over shaved ice. The pairing of strawberry with orange syrup and lemon juice is typical of fountain practice, where a small acid dose was added to keep heavy fruit syrups from tasting cloying.