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Tamarind Syrup
The pulp of tamarinds thoroughly mashed. Add an equal weight of water, and press through a moderately coarse strainer. To each quart add 3 pounds of sugar.
A fountain syrup in the old style: fruit pulp, water, and a great deal of sugar, worked cold. The proportions are sound, but the source ingredient looks different on a modern shelf.
- What "pulp of tamarinds" meansThe book assumes tamarinds sold in the pod or as the sticky brick of semi-dried pulp still packed with seeds and fibrous strands. Today the same brick is sold as "wet tamarind" or "tamarind slab"; the smooth seedless concentrate in jars is already reduced and far more acidic, so it should be used at a fraction of the weight if you substitute it.
- Weigh, do not measure"An equal weight of water" means by weight, not volume, so a pound of mashed pulp takes a pound (about 2 cups) of water. Soaking the mash for half an hour in warm water loosens it and makes the straining far quicker.
- The strainer is the hingeA moderately coarse strainer is deliberate: it holds back seeds, skin, and the tough internal fibres while letting the fruit purée through. Too fine a sieve or a cheesecloth strains out the body that makes the syrup taste of fruit rather than of acid water; work it through with a spoon or the back of a ladle rather than letting it drip.
- Sugar ratio and yieldThree pounds of sugar to a quart of strained juice is roughly 1.4 kg to 950 ml, a heavy fountain syrup. Expect close to half a gallon of finished syrup from that quart, since the dissolved sugar adds substantial volume.
- Dissolving the sugarNothing here is heated; the recipe gives no method for dissolving the sugar at all. Cold sugar at this concentration dissolves slowly; stir at intervals over an hour or two, or warm gently if patience runs out.
- Keeping itFountain syrups were generally kept in cooled jars or wells and used up briskly. A cold-mixed, unpasteurised fruit syrup will ferment or grow mould at room temperature; refrigerate it and use within a few weeks, or freeze in portions.
- ServingFountain practice was roughly one to one and a half ounces of syrup drawn into a glass and filled with carbonated water. Tamarind is markedly sour, so taste and adjust; it also makes a good base for a shrub or for sweetening iced tea.
Tamarind reached the American soda fountain by way of the Caribbean and Latin American trade, where agua de tamarindo and tamarind-ade were long-standing hot-weather drinks, and where the pulp arrived in barrels packed in sugar as both a preservative and a means of shipping it. Nineteenth-century pharmacists knew tamarind first as a mild laxative and a cooling agent for fevers, and that medicinal reputation may well have eased its way onto the fountain menu: the soda fountain grew out of the drugstore, and many of its early syrups were medicinal preparations made palatable. Tamarind was among the syrups a druggist could compound from stock on hand.