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Tea Syrup (Green Tea ounce Black Tea)
Green Tea, 1 ounce; Black Tea, 1 ounce.
Steep in 1 pint of water, strain, and add 1¼ pounds of sugar. Careless clerks should not be employed at the soda fountain. Absolute neatness in dress should be insisted upon.
A fountain syrup, not a beverage: the finished product is diluted at the glass with soda water. The proportions are workable, but the original leaves out the one number that decides whether it tastes of tea or of tannin.
- Steeping time is the hingeNo time is given, and 2 ounces of leaf in a pint of water is many times normal drinking strength. Water just off the boil and four to five minutes is enough; a long steep at that leaf ratio extracts enough tannin to make the syrup harsh and astringent, and sugar will not mask it.
- Weights and volumesA pint is 16 fluid ounces (2 cups). One ounce of loose tea is by weight, not volume — roughly a third to a half cup of black leaf, more for fluffy green. 1¼ pounds of sugar is about 2¾ cups.
- Sugar goes in hotAdd the sugar to the strained infusion while it is still hot and stir until fully dissolved; at this ratio it will not dissolve cold without long agitation. Strain again through a fine cloth if any leaf dust carried through.
- YieldExpect roughly 20 to 22 fluid ounces of finished syrup, allowing for the sugar's volume and for the liquid the leaves absorb.
- Serving proportionFountain practice was about 1 to 1½ fluid ounces of syrup in an 8-ounce glass, topped with carbonated water. Start at 1 ounce and adjust; this syrup is strong enough to take the higher dilution.
- Keeping itThis is below the sugar concentration that makes a syrup self-preserving, and tea offers nothing in the way of acidity. Refrigerate in a clean sealed bottle and use within two weeks; discard at the first sign of cloudiness or surface film.
- The tea itselfAn unflavoured breakfast-style black and a plain gunpowder or similar green suit the recipe. Skip smoked or heavily scented teas, which turn medicinal once concentrated and sweetened.
- The last two sentencesThey are not part of the method. Books of this kind often interleaved formulas with instructions to the proprietor, and here the two have been set as one block.
Tea syrup belongs to the era when the soda fountain sat at the back of the drugstore and the dispenser worked from a formula book much like a prescription counter. Syrups were compounded on the premises from bulk sugar and whatever flavour was to hand — fruit, spice, extracts, and in this case ordinary shop tea — then held in labelled pumps for dilution with carbonated water. The recipe blends green and black in equal parts, and both were staple grocery items in American shops of the period, sold loose from chests rather than in bags. The concluding remarks about careless clerks and neatness of dress are a reminder of what these books were actually for: the fountain was a public-facing counter in a business that traded on the appearance of pharmaceutical cleanliness.