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Tulip Blush
One ounce claret syrup, 1 ounce peach blow syrup, 4 ounces orange cider, ¼ glass shaved ice. Draw full of soda in fine stream, and mix.
A fountain drink, built in the glass and finished with carbonated water. The whole thing depends on the syrups, none of which sit on a modern shelf under those names.
- Claret syrupA red-wine flavored fountain syrup. Period formulas generally call for claret (dry Bordeaux-style red) simmered with sugar, sometimes with a little citrus and spice, though commercial versions could be largely colored, lightly acidulated sweetener with little or no wine in them. Simmering roughly equal parts red wine and sugar until dissolved gives the closest approximation, and with the alcohol mostly driven off, one ounce in a finished glass contributes very little.
- Peach blow syrup"Peach blow" is a color name, not a variety of peach. Fountain formularies give it variously as a peach, or peach-and-raspberry, syrup tinted a soft pink; any good peach syrup with a drop of red will read correctly.
- Orange ciderProbably not apple cider with oranges in it. At the fountain, "cider" was generally used for a sweetened, slightly tart, still fruit preparation drawn from a jar, so orange cider would be an orange-flavored version -- in effect orange juice or orangeade, sweetened and acidulated. Four ounces of it makes this drink mostly orange.
- The glassA standard fountain soda glass of the period held roughly 10 to 12 ounces. "¼ glass shaved ice" is therefore about 2 to 3 ounces of ice by volume, and "draw full of soda" means only as much carbonated water as will fit above the 6 ounces of syrup and cider -- a couple of ounces in a 10-ounce glass, a little more in a 12.
- Fine streamThe hinge of the recipe. Fountain draught arms had coarse and fine streams; fine gives a soft, aerated, foamy body without knocking the carbonation out. Pour chilled seltzer slowly down the inside of the glass rather than dumping it in, and stir once, briefly.
- Shaved ice, not cubesShaved ice chills instantly and gives the drink its slushy texture. Cubes will leave the syrup layer cold on top and warm at the bottom, and the drink is meant to be drunk at once.
- YieldOne glass, about 10 ounces, and it is sweet by modern standards. Cutting each syrup to half an ounce brings it closer to current taste without losing the color.
Soda fountains at the turn of the twentieth century sold color as much as flavor, and their drink names read like a paint chart: peach blow, maiden's blush, tulip, cherry phosphate. "Peach blow" as a color term is generally traced to the pale pink glaze on Chinese porcelain, made famous in America by the celebrated peach-blow vase sold at auction in the 1880s, after which glassmakers and syrup houses alike borrowed the word. A dispenser working from a book like this one worked with a range of syrups and was expected to improvise combinations that looked well in a clear glass. The claret is a reminder that the fountain and the bar were commercial rivals, and that fountain men were happy to borrow the vocabulary of wine while selling something a temperance customer could drink without complaint.