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Vienna Chocolate Syrup
Chocolate Syrup, 1 gallon; Extract of Cinnamon, ½ ounce. Mix well and strain.
A soda fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: it assumes you already keep a bulk chocolate syrup on hand and are flavouring a batch of it. The whole thing hinges on how strong "extract of cinnamon" was in a druggist's dispensary.
- The gallon is a working batchOne gallon is 128 fluid ounces, a fountain-sized quantity rather than a household one. Scale to a quart and the cinnamon becomes about ⅛ ounce, near enough to ¾ teaspoon if the original half-ounce is read as a fluid measure.
- Extract of cinnamon is not baking extractIn a fountain or pharmacy context this meant an alcoholic tincture carrying cinnamon or cassia oil, considerably more assertive than the supermarket bottle sold for cakes. Start with half the stated amount, taste, and add more; cassia in particular turns hot and medicinal fast.
- Why it says strainStraining through several layers of damp cheesecloth catches undissolved lumps and sediment so the syrup runs clean in the pump jar.
- Mixing order mattersMixing order -- Adding the extract to the syrup in a thin stream while stirring will disperse it more evenly than pouring syrup onto the concentrated extract.
- The chocolate syrup underneathPeriod fountain chocolate syrup was essentially cocoa, sugar and water, cooked and held hot to dissolve; some formulas also carried vanilla. A commercial chocolate syrup works, but the sweeter modern ones will need the cinnamon dialled back further still.
- Keeping itThere is no preservative here beyond sugar. A properly heavy syrup will hold several weeks refrigerated in a clean bottle; discard at any sign of fermentation or surface film.
- ServingFigure 1 to 1½ fluid ounces of syrup in a 10-ounce glass, filled with cold carbonated water and stirred. It is also good stirred into hot milk, which is closer to what the name is reaching for.
Fountain formularies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are largely lists like this one: a base syrup plus a flavouring tincture, written for a druggist who compounded his own stock behind the counter. "Vienna" is often said to have signalled chocolate spiced with cinnamon, echoing the Viennese coffeehouse habit of cinnamon and whipped cream on chocolate drinks, though the label was applied loosely; the same label turns up on rolls, coffee and cocoa mixes of the period without much consistency. The soda fountain in America grew out of the pharmacy, which is why the language here is dispensing language — ounces of extract, mix, strain — rather than cooking language, and why cinnamon arrives as a tincture off the shelf instead of as a stick to be steeped.