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Sunset Sundae
A ladleful of vanilla ice cream in sundae cup. Pour over it a thin grape syrup; top with whipped cream and a fresh strawberry.
A three-component fountain sundae that lives or dies on the syrup being thin enough to run down the ice cream rather than sit on top of it.
- A ladlefulFountain ladles and dishers varied in size; a serving of this kind was probably in the region of 3 to 4 fl oz, roughly half a cup. One recipe serves one.
- Thin grape syrupFountain syrup was a heavy sugar syrup cut with fruit juice; "thin" here means deliberately loosened so it flows. If you use a modern bottled grape syrup or grape jelly, slacken it with grape juice or water until it pours in a stream rather than a blob.
- Sundae cupThe footed tulip or trumpet glass of the fountain trade. Any narrow footed glass works.
- Whipped creamLightly sweetened cream whipped to a soft peak and kept cold. Pressurised aerosol cream deflates quickly against cold syrup.
- The strawberryHulled, set on the cream. The name suggests a red spot above the purple, so choose a berry with colour rather than size.
- Assembly orderSyrup before cream. Syrup poured over whipped cream tends to slide off and pool at the base of the glass.
Soda fountain manuals of the early twentieth century catalogued dozens of named sundaes that differed only in syrup and garnish, a fountain's menu board being part of its trade. "Sunset" is a colour name of that kind, purple syrup shading under a red berry, alongside other colour and fancy names of the period. The word sundae itself is generally traced to American Sunday restrictions on the sale of soda water in the 1880s and 1890s, with rival origin claims from several Midwestern and New York towns and no settled documentary winner. Grape syrup became a fountain staple after bottled unfermented grape juice was commercialised in the later nineteenth century, giving druggists a shelf-stable purple flavour that did not depend on the season.