Nectar
Two ounces of tartaric acid, two pounds of sugar, three pints of hot water; boil seven minutes. When nearly cold, add the whites of four eggs, one ounce essence wintergreen. Bottle and keep cool. One tablespoonful of this with a glass of water, and one-quarter of a teaspoonful of soda.
This is a home version of the acid-and-soda "nectar" syrups sold at soda fountains: a tablespoon in a glass of water, a pinch of bicarbonate stirred in, and the drink fizzes in the glass. Two features of it put it outside what can be made safely now.
- Raw egg white in a bottled syrupThe whites of four eggs are stirred into syrup that has already cooled, then bottled and stored. Nothing in the process brings the egg to a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and a sugar syrup at pantry or icebox temperature is not a preservative environment for it. The egg is there to clarify and give the syrup a foamy head, not to be cooked.
- An ounce of essence of wintergreenWintergreen flavouring is methyl salicylate, which is toxic by mouth in small amounts; concentrated oil of wintergreen is measured in drops for a batch this size, not ounces. Nineteenth-century "essences" varied wildly in strength, from heavily diluted alcoholic tinctures to near-neat oil, so there is no way to know what this ounce represents. Use a current recipe if you want a wintergreen soda syrup.
- Tartaric acidStill sold, usually in the wine-making or baking aisle, and the acid half of the trick is sound: the tartaric acid in the syrup meets the bicarbonate in the glass and releases carbon dioxide. Cream of tartar is a different compound and will not substitute one for one.
- "Soda"Soda at the table in books of this period generally means bicarbonate of soda, what a modern shelf calls baking soda. Saleratus, which appears in books of this vintage, fills the same leavening role; earlier saleratus was potassium rather than sodium bicarbonate.
- Proportions and yieldTwo pounds of sugar in three pints of water, boiled seven minutes, gives roughly two quarts of heavy syrup — on the order of a hundred-odd servings at a tablespoon each. The seven-minute boil is short because the aim is dissolution and slight concentration, not a candy stage.
Before bottled carbonated drinks were cheap and universal, fizz was something you assembled at the point of drinking. Syrups like this one paired a solid food acid with bicarbonate of soda added at the last moment, so the glass effervesced on the table; the same chemistry powered the seidlitz powders and "sherbet" powders sold by chemists, and the soda fountain itself grew out of the pharmacy counter rather than the kitchen. Wintergreen, along with sarsaparilla and birch, belonged to a family of North American aromatic flavours that tasted medicinal and refreshing at once — the flavour vocabulary that later settled into root beer. The egg white is a fountain-keeper's touch, carried over from the practice of clarifying syrups and jellies with beaten albumen, which also left the finished drink with a head of foam.