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Strawberry-Ade
Juice of 1 lemon, strawberry syrup to sweeten; crushed ice, shake well, pour into tall glass and fill up with plain water. Serve with straws.
A soda-fountain formula written for a dispenser who had syrup pumps and shaved ice within arm's reach. The proportions are left to the operator's judgement, so a little calibration helps.
- Quantities to start fromOne lemon yields roughly 2 tablespoons of juice. Begin with 1 to 1.5 fl oz (2-3 tablespoons) of strawberry syrup per drink and adjust; the finished glass should read tart first, sweet second.
- Strawberry syrupFountain syrup was a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with crushed fruit, denser than modern bottled soda syrups, which are thinner and often sweeter; pancake-style strawberry topping is far too thick. Simmer hulled berries with an equal weight of sugar and strain if you want something closer to the original density.
- "Plain water"At the fountain this meant still tap water, as distinct from the carbonated water drawn from the other tap. Ades were generally made with plain water; use plain cold water, or soda water if you want a strawberry soda instead.
- The shakeThe lemon juice, syrup and ice go in the mixing glass together and are shaken, then poured ice and all into the tall glass. Shaking before dilution is what makes the drink taste integrated rather than layered.
- Crushed iceFountain ice was shaved or chipped fine, which chills and dilutes fast. Crushed ice from a machine is the closest match; whole cubes will leave the drink warm and too strong.
- Glassware and yieldFountain "tall" glasses ran somewhere in the region of 10 to 12 oz. This makes one drink; scale the lemon and syrup rather than trying to batch it, since the shake with ice is doing part of the work.
- StrawsThe recipe calls for straws in the plural; fountain straws of the period were paper and narrow.
Soda-fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generally treat sodas as drinks charged with carbonated water and ades as drinks built on fruit juice and syrup, though the line is not absolute and carbonated lemonades do appear. An -ade is often described, loosely, as lemonade with something added, and strawberry syrup was a fountain staple already kept on hand for sodas, phosphates and ice-cream sundaes. Books like this one were trade manuals, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the home cook, which is why the measurements stop at "syrup to sweeten" -- the operator was expected to know his own syrup and to work at speed. The American drugstore fountain grew out of pharmacists selling mineral waters as a health article in the early 1800s, and by the time this style of book was current it had become a full retail business with its own vocabulary, glassware and standard drinks.