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Sparkling Punch
One ounce lemon juice, 2 ounces orange juice, 4 teaspoonfuls granulated sugar, and ½ glass shaved ice. Mix in some soda by stirring, strain into 12-ounce glass and fill with coarse stream of carbonated water. Put 2 quarts of lemon water ice in a can imbedded in crushed ice, well salted, add 1 gill of kirschwasser, 1 gill of maraschino, 1 gill of champagne and 1 gill of white wine; mix thoroughly and serve.
Two drinks are printed as one entry here: a single glass built at the fountain, then a bulk punch made from lemon water ice spiked with spirits. Read them as separate preparations.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. The second preparation therefore takes a full pint of alcohol in total across the kirsch, maraschino, champagne and white wine, against 2 quarts of ice.
- "Mix in some soda"The dispenser's habit of adding a short splash of carbonated water to dissolve the sugar and knock the juice about before the glass is filled. The sugar must be in solution before the long fill, or it settles as grit.
- Coarse streamFountain taps offered a fine spray and a coarse jet; the recipe calls for the coarse one to fill the glass. A soda siphon or a bottle poured hard down the centre of the glass does the same work.
- Shaved iceNot cubes. Shaved or finely crushed ice chills the juice fast in the mixing glass and is then strained out, so the 12-ounce glass takes carbonated water rather than meltwater.
- Lemon water iceA lemon sorbet, churned rather than still-frozen: sugar syrup, lemon juice and water, no dairy and no egg. Two quarts is a large quantity, which is why it is set in a can packed in salted crushed ice, the old hand-freezer method for holding a frozen mixture at serving texture.
- Salt on the iceSalt lowers the melting point of the surrounding ice so the packing bath sits well below freezing. Keep the salted slush below the rim of the can; a spoonful of brine in the punch ruins it.
- Kirschwasser and maraschinoBoth are clear cherry distillates and both are still sold. Maraschino liqueur is sweet and marzipan-scented, nothing like the syrup in a jar of cocktail cherries.
- YieldThe fountain version makes one 12-ounce glass. The punch, at roughly 2 quarts of ice plus a pint of alcohol, will fill a good many small cups and should be spooned out soon after it is mixed, before the spirit softens it.
Soda fountain manuals were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the cook at home, which is why the instructions assume a fine and coarse tap, a stock of shaved ice and a freezer can already packed. "Punch" at the fountain covered a broad family of citrus-and-sugar drinks; the word is generally traced to the Hindi and Sanskrit for five, for the five elements of the original spirit-citrus-sugar-water-spice mixture, and by this period it had drifted to mean almost any mixed fruit drink served in quantity. The pairing here is telling: the same page offers a temperate glass of juice and carbonated water for the counter and a frozen, well-fortified bowl for a private party.