Home › At the Fountain › Vanilla Syrup (Simple Syrup gallon American)
Vanilla Syrup (Simple Syrup gallon American)
Simple Syrup, 1 gallon; American Extract Vanilla, 1 ounce; American Fruit Acid, 66; American Soda Foam, 66. Stir the acid with a portion of the syrup, add the extract of vanilla, mix.
This is a soda fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: a gallon batch of flavoring syrup meant to be measured into a glass and topped with carbonated water. Two of the four ingredients are proprietary house products, which is the main obstacle to reproducing it.
- What "66" meansThe figure is not ounces, and the notation is unexplained in the text. It may stand for 66 drops (which would be roughly an eighth of a fluid ounce), but the reference scale is lost, so treat the quantity as genuinely undetermined and dose acid and foam by taste and appearance instead.
- Simple syrup, fountain strengthFountain simple syrup was generally much heavier than a modern bar syrup, close to saturation, so that it would keep and would not thin the finished drink; the recipe itself specifies no strength. A gallon is presumably the finished volume of syrup rather than the water you start with.
- Fruit acidA commercial solution of citric or tartaric acid in water, used to give sweet syrup a fruit-like edge and to cut the flatness of a heavy sugar solution. A pinch of citric acid dissolved in a little of the syrup does the same job; add it a little at a time, since a gallon of syrup needs very little to shift noticeably.
- Soda foamSoam foam -- A proprietary foaming preparation, commonly based on saponin from quillaia (soapbark), though period foams were also made with egg albumen or gums. Quillaia extract is still permitted as a beverage foaming agent in limited amounts, but the strength of the trade product here is unknown and the effect is cosmetic. Leaving it out costs you nothing but the collar of foam.
- Vanilla extractOne ounce to the gallon is about two tablespoons, a light dose for a gallon of syrup. The recipe has you add it after the acid is stirred in; keep it away from heat, since the aromatics are volatile.
- Working orderThe instruction to stir the acid into a portion of the syrup first is the hinge. Acid crystals or a concentrated acid solution dropped straight into a full gallon streak and settle; dissolving them in a cup or two of syrup first, then folding that back in, gives an even batch.
- Yield and useA gallon is 128 ounces, so at a pour of about 1 1/2 ounces per glass it would make roughly 85 sodas; period pours varied, and a one-ounce pour would give nearer 128. Keep it refrigerated in a modern kitchen; the sugar concentration that made it shelf-stable behind a counter is not something you can verify at home.
Books like this one were trade literature, published by flavoring houses to sell their own extracts, acids and foams, which is why the ingredient list reads as a parts catalogue with "American" attached to three of the four items. Vanilla was among the staple syrups of the American soda fountain, and it also served as the flavoring for ice cream sodas. The fruit acid and foam belong to the particular craft of the drawn soda: carbonated water hitting a heavy sweet syrup tastes flabby without a little acid, and a saponin head made the glass look livelier at the counter. The formula does tell you the fountain was a commercial operation working in gallons.