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Wild Cherry Syrup
American Concentrated Wild Cherry Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts; Fruit Acid, 1 ounce.
This is a fountain formula rather than a kitchen recipe: a dispenser's dilution of a purchased flavoring concentrate into bulk syrup, written for someone filling a gallon jar behind the counter. The proportions are the whole of it, so the arithmetic matters more than technique.
- The ratio is the recipeOne part concentrate to three parts plain syrup, finished with acid. Scaled down, that is 1 cup concentrate to 3 cups simple syrup with about 1½ teaspoons of fruit acid solution — the yield here is one gallon, far more than a household needs.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" of the period was heavy: roughly 2 parts granulated sugar dissolved in 1 part water by weight, cooked just enough to clear, not a thin 1:1 bar syrup. A lighter syrup will make a flabby, under-sweet soda at standard dispensing strength.
- Fruit acidThis means a prepared acid solution kept at the fountain, citric or tartaric acid dissolved in water. The strength is not given here and varied from formula to formula. Dry citric acid crystals are not the same thing; dissolve them first, and use considerably less by weight than the ounce called for.
- An ambiguous ounceWhether the ounce of fruit acid is weight or fluid measure is genuinely unclear, and fountain manuals of the era used both. Start well under an ounce and taste — the acid is there to cut sweetness and brighten the cherry, not to be tasted as sourness.
- The concentrate"American Concentrated Wild Cherry Syrup" was evidently a trade product bought ready-made, presumably a sweetened extract of wild cherry bark (Prunus serotina) sold to druggists. It does not appear to be available today; a modern wild cherry fountain syrup or a bark extract from a reputable supplier is the closest equivalent, and dilution will need adjusting to taste.
- Do not improvise the extractWild cherry bark contains cyanogenic compounds, and commercial extracts are made to a controlled strength. Steeping your own bark to make a concentrate for this formula is not a substitution to attempt by eye.
- Keeping and servingThere is no cooking step here, and while a syrup this sweet resists spoiling, the safest course for a modern gallon is to refrigerate it and treat it as perishable. At the fountain, syrup was typically drawn at something like an ounce or so to a glass of carbonated water.
Wild cherry was a druggist's flavor before it was a soda flavor. Bark of the American black cherry, Prunus serotina, had a long-standing place in the pharmacopeia as a cough and bronchial remedy, valued for a bitter-almond aromatic edge that made bitter medicines palatable, and the soda fountain in nineteenth-century America grew directly out of the pharmacy counter. Formularies like this one were written for the pharmacist-dispenser who bought flavoring concentrates by the quart from wholesale houses and cut them with his own plain syrup — which is why the instructions assume you already have a stock jar of heavy syrup and a bottle of fruit acid within reach, and why they give no method at all. The addition of acid is the fountain trade's standing trick: sugar syrup at that strength tastes dull and cloying under carbonation, and a measured dose of citric or tartaric acid restores the impression of fruit.