Alcohol

By Al Sotack

More than a hundred years ago there was a thriving American community of professional drink-smiths that stretched from coast to coast. While their mixological craft left its mark on American popular culture, the arcane arts that they practiced have since been mostly lost to the ravages of time.

But they weren't in arm garters and vests, and they weren't slinging hooch—at least not primarily. Theirs was the realm of the sundae, the milkshake, the egg cream, and the malt. Their recipe tomes were filled with things like the crush, the phosphate, the fizz, and, of course, the soda. They’re known to history and pop culture as soda jerks—immortalized in their white caps over neat side-parts, their bowties and their pristine jackets—and they made some of the most classic low-to-no-ABV mixed drinks you may never have heard of.

A precious few soda fountains have survived from their heyday at the turn of the century into the present, but in the past 20 years or so we’ve seen a resurgence of the concept. New soda shops like Philadelphia's Franklin Fountain and San Francisco's Ice Cream Bar attempt to do for sodas and sundaes what the candle-lit cocktail bars of the twentieth century did for the Manhattan and the Negroni. If you visit, you’ll find artisans dedicating themselves to an underappreciated craft—with as much skill and discipline as any bartender.

A look inside a soda shop, circa 1935

"I think there is more interest in it right now," says Juliet Pries, the owner of Ice Cream Bar, which opened in 2011 and serves drinks like the New Orleans Hangover, a float that features chicory coffee syrup.. "People are interested again in more complicated flavors. There was a time when people didn't have the patience for craft cocktails too, but it's coming back around again."

Pries has a background in bartending as well as pastry, making her a living example of the kind of crossover of beverage interests one can find in the old soda fountain books. In those old volumes hide a plethora of bitters and tinctures but also drink names we recognize from the Golden Age of bartending, like the "fizz." In fact, Pries says she was inspired (like so many of us) in part by another bartender-cum-soda fountain enthusiast, writer Darcy O’Neil, whose 2010 book Fix the Pumps introduced quite a few to the nonalcoholic mixed drinks of yore.

O’Neil's The Extinct Chemical Company made a few old ingredients available to modern mixologists around the same time, most notably acid phosphate. The ingredient is used in the soda shop's iconic phosphates, like the Japanese Thirst Killer (a favorite of mine from 1905 that for years was featured on the menu at Franklin Fountain). The acid can be used to balance drinks without the added flavor content of lemon or vinegar and has found its way into contemporary boozy experiments and NA cocktails alike.

Just as cocktail bars were looking to place the boozy mixed drink back on the pedestal it deserved, soda fountain enthusiasts were doing the same for the soda, the fizz, and the sundae. "I feel like most of [the resurgence] is places that specialize in ice cream or bars that have soda programs," Pries says. "Soda has come a long way. Even the bottled sodas in grocery stores have come a long way since we opened."

But wait—what actually is soda, anyway? The sweet-and-fizzy six packs you find at the supermarket are descendants of a family of drinks one found at drug stores, bars and soda fountains. These drinks involved a syrup (often with an acid element already added) combined with carbonated water. At most of the serious joints, this is made with an old-school carbonator and dispensed by the "fountain" that is so representative of the culture—the tower and tap that pours the seltzer. All of this was made in front of you, á la minute, by a snappily dressed soda jerk.

A pharmacist preparing a fountain drink for a customer, circa 1895

Egg creams, sundaes, and milkshakes survived the slow near-extinction of the soda fountain by escaping the old parlors and drug stores and branching out into the ice cream shop of mid century American popular culture. Other conventions of the soda fountains were not so lucky. While craft bartenders picked up a few tricks after O’Neil's book was published and reimagined the acid phosphate at the local cocktail bar, they mostly ignored the many strikingly named mixed drinks imported from older books like The Dispenser's Formulary, a big 1905 tome that captures much of the era's recipes and culture. It's a curious thing, considering how low-to-no ABV mixed drinks have been uptrending for years and many of these old drinks mirror cocktails with their extravagant names and meticulous, complex recipes.

Some soda shop classics have survived in name only. You may recognize the name "Crush" because of the common bright orange soda, but that brand, now owned by Keurig Dr Pepper, originally dates back to 1911. Before that, the orange crush was just one of the more popular drinks of the "crush" family. These soda fountain classics, dating back to the 1880s, represented, according to O’Neil in Fix the Pumps, a way for fountains to advertise they were using fresh fruit—a familiar selling point to those of us who made our bones craft-bartending during the cocktail boom.

And while O’Neil has a very cool video demonstrating how to make an orange crush–style soda from orange extracts (macerations of orange in alcohol in the same vein as vanilla extract), I love making a modern version with fresh fruit juice syrup. I make my base by simply blending fresh juice with sugar and orange oil expressed from the orange peels. And while you could adjust the acid of the orange with powdered citric acid, the way some bars do, I like phosphate for this as it keeps the rival citrus flavors out of the way of what is supposed to be that breakfast staple's spotlight. And it gives modern bartenders something to do with orange juice that isn't the much maligned Blood and Sand.

Sodas, crushes, and phosphates are like milkshakes—they’re families of drinks usually further distinguished by their dominant flavors. Old menus tout tons of chocolate phosphates and cherry crushes, but paging through The Dispenser's Formulary shows this wasn't the only style of drink naming at the old fountains. Many of the recipes tucked away are named the way bartenders—then and now—often dub their concoctions, with a proper name.

The Razzle Dazzle tells you nothing about its ingredient list with its moniker, but it tells you everything about what this NA classic attempts to do. The drink combines pineapple, lemon, simple syrup, and raspberry vinegar, a novel ingredient today but one that shows up enough times in The Dispenser's Formulary to place it as a regular ingredient of the old-school fountains. You can make your own simply by blending fresh raspberries in a favorite vinegar. For this one I prefer a sherry vinegar because I love the combination of sherry and pineapple (as seen in the classic Bizzy Izzy Highball).

Not every drink lands so perfectly off the page. One classic I kept coming back to in that old 1905 guide required a little adaptation. Like the Razzle Dazzle, the Maple Frostbite combines syrup and soda over fine ice, but its original version is something like a cobbler. It belongs to the family of soda fountain drinks known as frappés, which I like to think of as fancy slushies. There's no acid to be found here, though. While it's true that many of the classic syrups have acid integrated, I couldn't find any proof that that was the case in this instance. For my vanilla syrup I prefer whole vanilla bean over vanilla extract (the water soluble elements hit a little differently than the alcohol soluble ones for me) and a hearty, relatively dark maple syrup. I’ve added a healthy amount of fresh lemon juice to this one, because, well, I think it tastes best.

With lemon juice or not, the Maple Frostbite and the Razzle Dazzle are proof that there is great source material in the history of soda fountains to be adapted, executed, and relished. While people might be increasingly interested in mixed drinks that won't get you blotto, it seems a shame that we haven't collectively reached back into these low-to-no ABV classics the way we have with boozy historical classics. The world of cocktails and the world of the soda fountains are not so far apart, but I think it's the job of modern drink makers to mine both for the stuff that works today.