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Syrup - Hot Process
Sugar, 12 lbs.; Water, 1 gallon.
Put water and sugar in kettle, stir constantly as it warms, and take off the fire just as soon as it begins to boil, and strain while hot.
This is bulk simple syrup for a soda fountain, cut far heavier than modern bar syrup. The whole method turns on stopping the heat the instant the surface breaks.
- The hinge: do not let it boilThe hinge: stop at the boil -- the recipe says to take it off the fire the moment it begins to boil. Prolonged boiling drives off water and raises the density, and an over-concentrated syrup may crystallize in the bottle or the pump. Heat only until the sugar is fully dissolved and the first bubbles rise, then pull it off.
- The ratio is not 1:1Twelve pounds of sugar to a gallon of water is roughly 1.4:1 by weight, about 59 Brix, richer than a standard 1:1 bar syrup though still short of saturation. Anything dosed with it will need somewhat less volume than a 1:1 syrup.
- Metric and scale5.4 kg sugar to 3.8 L water. To make a manageable amount, about 720 g sugar to 500 ml water holds the same proportion.
- YieldThe dissolved sugar adds its own volume: expect roughly 1.75 to 2 gallons (7 to 7.5 L) of finished syrup from the full batch, not one gallon.
- Why strainNineteenth-century sugar carried scum, dust and cane fibre that rose during heating. Modern refined sugar is clean, but straining hot through a fine sieve or damp cheesecloth still catches any undissolved grit and keeps the syrup bright.
- StirringConstant stirring matters only until the sugar is in solution. Undissolved crystals sitting on the kettle bottom scorch and throw a caramel note into what should be a neutral base.
- Keeping itA syrup this concentrated resists spoilage but is not sterile. Bottle it hot into clean, scalded glass, cap, and refrigerate; discard at the first sign of haze, film or a fermented smell.
- Using itFigure 1 to 1.5 fl oz of this syrup per 8 oz glass, flavored and topped with carbonated water. If a modern recipe calls for 1:1 syrup, use somewhat less of this.
Every soda fountain ran on a stock of plain syrup, and the trade argued steadily over how to make it. The cold process — agitating or percolating sugar through water without heat — was held to give a cleaner, sweeter taste, since nothing was caramelized and no sugar was inverted; the hot process, given here, was faster, dissolved more sugar per gallon, and had the practical advantage of killing off the wild yeasts and molds that turned a keg of syrup ropy in warm weather. Dispensing manuals of this kind were written for druggists, whose fountains were an extension of the prescription counter, and they treated syrup-making as a compounding operation, though this recipe names no density target and no hydrometer. A heavy plain syrup like this one was the neutral base into which the fruit acids, extracts and colorings of the fountain's flavor list were stirred.