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William's Favorite
One-half teaspoonful beef extract, 1 teaspoonful clam bouillon, 1 tablespoonful sweet cream, 1 teaspoonful port wine, boiling water to fill mug. , 1 teaspoonful port wine, boiling water to fill mug. Serve with salt, pepper and celery salt. FINIS
A hot savory drink from the soda fountain's beef-tea counter, not a soda at all. It is built directly in the mug, so the whole thing takes about a minute once you have the components open.
- The duplicated lineThe port wine and boiling water appear twice in the printed text, almost certainly a duplication in the printing or transcription rather than a second addition. Use one teaspoonful of port and enough boiling water to fill the mug once.
- Mug sizeThe recipe gives no mug size; a mug of this kind would plausibly hold somewhere around a cup. Against that, the flavourings come to about 5 1/2 teaspoons, close to two tablespoons, so the drink is mostly hot water and deliberately light-bodied.
- Beef extractThis means the thick dark paste sold as Liebig's Extract of Beef or Bovril, still available. Modern bouillon cubes or paste concentrates work but are considerably saltier, so hold back the finishing salt until you taste.
- Clam bouillonBottled clam juice or clam broth is the direct equivalent. It was sold at fountains by the glass in this era.
- Add the cream lastThe recipe gives no order, but a tablespoon of cream dropped into water at a rolling boil, with a little acid from the port, can curdle. Dissolve the extract and clam broth in the hot water, let it stop bubbling, then stir in the cream and the port.
- The portA teaspoonful of tawny or ruby port contributes little more than colour and a touch of sweetness at this quantity. Another fortified red would do much the same work.
- SeasoningThe recipe says to serve the drink with salt, pepper and celery salt rather than seasoning it in the mug. Taste first, given how salty the extract already is.
- YieldOne mug, one serving. It does not scale well in a pot because the cream is happier stirred in per portion.
Turn-of-the-century American soda fountains sold far more than sweet drinks: the same marble counter dispensed hot beef tea, clam bouillon and malted milk, marketed as restoratives for the tired shopper or the convalescent. Meat extracts had been industrialized in the 1860s by Liebig's Extract of Meat Company, and by 1900 a jar of dark beef paste could be found at the fountain alongside the syrup pumps. Clam broth had its own vogue in the coastal cities, sold by the cup as a bracing tonic, and combining the two with cream and a spoonful of port is characteristic of the period's habit of treating the fountain as a quasi-medicinal bar. The FINIS following this drink marks the last entry in the book.