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Violet Syrup
American Violet Extract, ½ ounces; Plain Syrup, 1 gallon; American Fruit Acid, 1 ounce; American Violet Color, ½ ounce; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce.
This is a soda fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: five proprietary trade preparations blended into a gallon of simple syrup, to be drawn an ounce or two at a time and finished with carbonated water. Two of the five components are the reason it cannot be mixed today.
- The colour is the problem"American Violet Color" was a proprietary dye sold to fountain operators without any statement of composition. Violet and mauve shades of the period were commonly coal-tar anilines, a number of which have since been withdrawn from food use; there is no way to know which compound was in the bottle, and half an ounce per gallon is a substantial dose for a drink.
- "Soda foam" is a saponin extractFoam preparations of the era were generally quillaia (soapbark) or yucca extracts, sometimes cut with egg albumen. Quillaia is still permitted in beverages but only within tightly limited concentrations, and an unspecified half-ounce of an unknown historic foamer per gallon is not a measurable quantity.
- "American Fruit Acid" is not a single thingFountain acid solutions were citric, tartaric or phosphoric, or blends, and the strength was often not printed on the label. An ounce per gallon could mean a pleasant tartness or a mouth-stripping one depending on which bottle was on the shelf.
- Plain syrupIn fountain practice this meant a cold- or hot-dissolved sugar syrup close to saturation, denser than a modern 1:1 simple syrup.
- Fluid ounces, not weightExtracts, acids and colours of this kind were usually measured by fluid ounce from graduated bottles, so half an ounce here most likely means half a fluid ounce, about a tablespoon.
- How it was servedA gallon of finished syrup was fountain stock, not a batch of drinks. The standard draw was about 1 to 1½ fluid ounces of syrup per glass, topped with carbonated water, so a gallon covers roughly 85 to 128 servings.
- If you want violet sodaUse a current recipe built on a food-grade violet flavouring and a permitted colour. Violet extract on its own is a legitimate flavour; it is the anonymous dye and foamer here that put the formula out of reach.
Violet was one of the perfumed flavours the American soda fountain borrowed from the confectioner and the perfumer in the decades either side of 1900, alongside rose, orange flower and vanilla-tonka blends. Parma violet lozenges, violet creams and violet liqueurs had already trained the public palate to accept a flower as a flavour, and the fountain, which had begun as an adjunct to the drugstore, was well placed to sell it: the same counter stocked the extracts, acids, dyes and foaming agents that these formulas call for by brand name. That is the real subject of a page like this. It is not cookery so much as compounding, written for a dispenser who bought his flavour, his colour and his head of foam from a supply house catalogue and measured them out of graduated bottles.