Fruitade
Take 1/3 glass Fruit Syrup, adding water and cracked ice to fill.
A one-line formula rather than a recipe, and it assumes you already have a bottle of homemade fruit syrup on the shelf. The proportions are the whole of it.
- What "glass" meansGlasses of the period commonly ran somewhere around 8 to 12 fl oz, so a third is on the order of 3 fl oz of syrup. Scale to whatever tumbler you are using rather than measuring absolutely.
- Fruit syrupThis means a heavy sugar syrup infused with fruit juice — raspberry, strawberry, currant, lemon or orange — not the thin cordials sold today. A 1:1 sugar-to-juice syrup, cooked briefly and bottled, is the closest match.
- Adjust for modern syrupsCommercial fruit syrups and Italian-style bar syrups are usually sweeter and more concentrated than a home-cooked one. Start at a quarter glass and taste before going to a third.
- Cracked ice, not cubesCracked ice was struck from a block and melts faster than cubes, which was part of the dilution. If you use cubes, add a splash more water or the drink stays cloying.
- Order of assemblyThe syrup goes in first; the text then says only 'adding water and cracked ice to fill,' without specifying which of the two comes first.
- Sparkling versionSubstituting soda water for still water gives a sparkling fruit soda. The ratio is the same either way.
- YieldOne glass; the proportions are given per serving.
The -ade suffix, generally traced through lemonade from French and ultimately Latin usage, simply marks a drink made by diluting something with water, and by this period it had been extended freely to any fruit. Recipes of this kind were short because the real work happened earlier in the year: households put up bottled fruit syrups during the summer glut, and a book like this expected the cook to have raspberry or currant syrup already standing in the cellar. What survives on the page is only the assembly instruction.