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Suggestions Based on Success
The Wm. B. Riker & Son Co. does one of the largest soda businesses in the entire city of New York. It operates five fountains in five different stores and intends shortly to instal two more fountains in its other two establishments. Such a soda department naturally requires an expert at its head and Albert P. Corcoran is the man. He has made soda his specialty, selecting that from the many lines open to him as a registered pharmacist. Mr. Corcoran is a firm believer in the future of the soda water business, and is sure that the next few years will see as great expansion as has characterized the last decade. "Soda water must be regarded as a specialty," he said, "and any man who gives but cursory attention to his fountain and intrusts his dispensing to an unskilled boy is making a grave mistake. Pretty soon some more progressive rival will have all the trade in that locality. "Another mistake is to charge too little for soda. It's just as easy to get 10 cents a glass as it is 5, and at the latter figure what can a fountain owner give his customers? Every one knows but the customer, and it won't take him long to find out. The public will buy more good soda at 10 cents than poor at 5. "During the past year our soda trade has increased 50 per cent. In some of our stores it has doubled. We know that most of that is due to the quality of our soda and our methods, but some of it arises because more soda is drank each year. One of our Brooklyn stores is alongside of one of the branches of a famous confectioner, yet we have doubled our soda sales there. It's rather a feather in the cap of our methods. It comes of making a specialty and a special study of the business. "In our 23d street, New York, store our soda sales are growing so rapidly that we installed a new $20,000 Innovation fountain to meet the demands of our trade. "Of more specific matters there can be no doubt that the sundae is steadily growing in popularity. I am sorry it is, for a sundae requires so much time for service and cleansing the dishes and spoons afterward. But the public must get what it wants. In a small business where there is lots of time all this makes little difference, but on the corner of 23d street every minute counts. "Cider is a coming thing in fountain drinks and sundaes. There is no doubt about that. Here's a good formula for cider punch: Peel a lemon and pour half a pint of cooking sherry on the peeling; to the juice of a lemon add a cupful of sugar, a little grated nutmeg and one quart of sweet cider. Mix this together thoroughly and then add it to the rind of the lemon and the sherry. Let it get perfectly cold on ice. A wineglassful of brandy is a great improvement, but localities alter the advisability of that. SOMETHING PRETTY IN SODA MENUS. "We have hit on a new idea regarding soda menus which I consider a winner. In the first place, we are having made a handsome set of menu folders with a front cover in colors showing a pretty young woman drinking soda out of one of our glasses. It is reproduced from a photograph. The lady is very comme il faut and charming to a degree. The color work is exquisite. Now the main idea is this. Let any man go into a fashionable restaurant, and as he seats himself the waiter slaps down a bill of fare of four or six pages as big as an old Brown's Bible. The pages are closely printed. As the French say, the man is stupefied. He is appalled at this array of good things to eat, and if he loses his nerve will end in ordering an omelet. "It is the same way with soda menus. Long lists of fancy names confuse a customer. A few would entice him. There's the point. In our new menus we give but a few drinks and a few words of explanation about each. Say six drinks. The next day we change the contents of the menu, and so each day until our whole list is covered. A regular customer will thus learn about everything we serve by degrees without losing heart and appetite. "Nor do I approve of huge glittery lists, framed, beside the fountain. Usually they are artistic abominations. They mean nothing and no one ever looks at them. Their style is similar to the decorations of a bar.. A dainty menu is the thing, but make it short. Life itself is short. But the phases of the soda business are not. There is always something to be learned by study, reflection, and, most of all, observation."
Buried in this trade interview is a working formula for cider punch, which is what concerns a cook. The rest is soda-fountain business advice from a Manhattan pharmacy chain around the turn of the century.
- The hinge: steep the peel separatelyThe lemon peel goes into the sherry alone and sits while you build the rest; that fortified infusion pulls the oil out of the zest in a way that juice and sugar cannot. Pour the cider mixture onto the sherry and peel, not the other way round, and give it at least half an hour cold before straining out the rind.
- "Sweet cider" means unfermentedIn American usage of the period, sweet cider is fresh unfermented apple juice, cloudy and unpasteurised. Use fresh-pressed apple cider from the refrigerated case, not hard cider and not clear filtered apple juice, which is too thin and too uniformly sweet.
- Cooking sherryHalf a pint is one cup. Bottled "cooking sherry" today is heavily salted and will ruin the drink; use a dry amontillado or a medium sherry you would drink.
- A wineglassfulA wineglass in recipes of this period is usually reckoned at about two fluid ounces, not the eight-ounce pour of a modern glass, though the text itself does not define it. Two ounces of brandy in a quart of cider is a light hand; the "localities alter the advisability" remark most likely refers to local liquor licensing and temperance sentiment rather than to taste.
- Sugar and acidA full cup of sugar to one lemon's juice and a quart of cider is very sweet by current palates. If you are serving it neat as a punch, start with half and adjust, or add a second lemon.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the mixture; pre-ground nutmeg goes dusty and will settle as grit at the bottom of the glass. A few passes on a microplane is enough for a quart.
- Yield and serviceAbout six cups before ice. Strain, chill hard, and pour over ice rather than icing the punch itself, which waters it down.
This belongs to a genre of trade literature aimed at druggists, for whom the soda fountain was a profit centre rather than a sideline; Corcoran is a registered pharmacist who made soda his specialty, which suggests how lucrative the counter had become in New York by the early 1900s. His enthusiasm for cider is, on the evidence of this page, as much his own prediction as an established trend; sweet cider was seasonal and, being unfermented, sat comfortably in shops that could not or would not sell liquor, though the optional brandy here shows how thin that line could be in practice. The complaint about sundaes is worth noting as economic history rather than culinary opinion, since a sundae meant dishes, spoons and washing-up in a business built on speed. The dig at the confectioner next door and the boast about a twenty-thousand-dollar Innovation fountain place this squarely in the fountain-expansion years before Prohibition made soda counters a national institution.