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Vanilla Velvet
Vanilla Syrup, 1 ounce; Lemon Syrup, 1 ounce.
Fill soda tumbler with fine and coarse stream. Can also be served with plain or ice cream.
A two-syrup fountain drink written in dispenser shorthand. The whole thing depends on the carbonation being cold and hard, and on the syrups being the thick fountain kind rather than thin flavoring extracts.
- The ounces are fluid ouncesOne ounce of syrup is 2 tablespoons, so this is 4 tablespoons of syrup total. A soda tumbler of the period held roughly 8 to 10 ounces, which is the amount of carbonated water to fill over the syrup.
- Fine and coarse streamAn old fountain head had two draws, a fine spray and a coarse solid stream, used in combination to mix the syrup and fill the glass. With a siphon or a bottle of seltzer, pour a hard splash first to combine the syrups, then top up slowly down the side of the glass.
- Fountain syrups are heavier than you thinkPeriod vanilla and lemon syrups were heavy sugar syrups flavored with extract and, in the lemon, citric or tartaric acid for tartness. Modern coffee syrups are thinner and less sweet; if you use them the drink will taste watery, so lean toward a scant extra half ounce.
- The acid is the pointLemon syrup here is not decoration. Its acid cuts the vanilla and keeps the drink from reading as plain sugar water, which is why a Velvet works with only two flavors.
- "Plain or ice cream""plain cream" means sweet dairy cream, drawn in before the water for a richer, cloudier drink. "Ice cream" makes it a proper ice cream soda: syrups first, a short fill, then a scoop of vanilla, then finish the fill to raise the foam.
- Cold everythingCarbonated water loses gas fast in a warm glass. Chill the tumbler and the seltzer; fountains ran their water through ice coils for exactly this reason.
- YieldOne glass, one drinker. The recipe is written per serving, as fountain formulas generally are.
Soda fountain manuals like this one were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than the home cook, which is why the instructions assume a two-stream draft arm and a rack of syrup pumps. "Velvet" was one of many fountain trade names -- alongside Frappe, Egg Phosphate, Nectar and Mist -- used to distinguish drinks that differed only in a syrup or a splash of cream. Vanilla and lemon were among the standard syrups on American fountains of this era, both made up from extract, sugar and, for the lemon, a little food acid. The prominence of such books tracks the rise of the drugstore fountain, which by the early twentieth century had become a fixture of American main streets and is generally held to have grown more central during Prohibition, when soda counters took up a good deal of the social trade that had belonged to saloons.