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The Knickerbocker
A new sundae from New York: Ice cream, 4 ounces; chocolate syrup, ½ ounce; raspberry crushed fruit, ½ ounce; whipped cream, 3 ounces; 2 brandied cherries; essence of rose, 4 dashes. Place ice cream in glass and add chocolate syrup, add one-half whipped cream and 2 dashes of essence of rose. Add raspberry fruit and then balance of whipped cream and dashes of rose essence and top with cherries. Each of the separate portions will appear as a separate layer in glass. This sundae should be served in a tall, narrow, 10-ounce, thin glass, and dispenser in serving should insert long spoon to bottom of glass just once and draw slowly towards top, so as to intermix portions in one place only. This is done for appearance only. Fifteen cents should be secured for this sundae and all materials should be of the very best in order to be fully appreciated.
A layered fountain sundae built for the eye as much as the palate. The whole thing succeeds or fails on whether the layers stay distinct, so assemble it cold and work quickly.
- The hinge: build cold, in orderChill the glass and have every component cold and thick before you start; warm syrup or soft cream will bleed and the layers collapse into brown mud. The single downward-and-up pass with a long spoon is decorative marbling only, not mixing, and it is done last.
- Ounces here are fluid ouncesFountain work was measured by dipper and pump shot. Four ounces of ice cream is one generous scoop (about 1/2 cup), a half ounce of syrup is one tablespoon, and the three ounces of whipped cream is the finished, whipped volume -- a scant 1/2 cup of whipped cream, which comes from roughly 3 tablespoons of cream before whipping.
- Essence of roseFountain rose essences were generally concentrated, usually alcohol-based flavourings, much stronger than the rose water sold in supermarkets today. Four dashes of the old stuff is not four dashes of modern rose water; the original measure is unreliable for us, so add a few drops, taste, and stop well short of soap and potpourri.
- Crushed fruit"Raspberry crushed fruit" was a trade product: whole berries crushed with sugar into a thick, spoonable preserve, not a thin coulis. Cook a cup of raspberries with a few tablespoons of sugar until syrupy, then chill it hard so it sits as a band rather than running.
- Brandied cherriesSold in jars then and now. Modern bright-red maraschinos are a different, sweeter article and will read as candy; dark brandied or amarena cherries are closer to what was intended.
- The glassA tall, narrow ten-ounce glass is what makes the stripes visible. A parfait glass, a small pilsner or a tall tumbler works; a wide coupe defeats the whole point.
- Yield and priceOne sundae. The fifteen cents demanded was steep for a fountain in this period, when a plain sundae ran a nickel or a dime, which is why the text insists on best-quality materials.
"Knickerbocker" was shorthand for old Dutch New York, borrowed from Washington Irving's invented chronicler Diedrich Knickerbocker and by 1900 attached to everything from beer to hotels to the city's baseball club, so naming a showy new sundae after it was a way of stamping it New York. Trade manuals like this one existed to sell the fountain as a profitable counter, and layered specialties were the argument: the same syrups, cream and ice cream already in stock, arranged so the customer paid three times a nickel for them. The insistence that the spoon be drawn through once "for appearance only" is pure soda-fountain craft, where the dispenser worked in full view and presentation was the product. The name is also attached in Britain to the Knickerbocker Glory, a tall layered ice cream sundae whose origin is uncertain and which is not recorded before the 1930s.