Old Fashioned Soda Recipies

Homemade Cola

Soda is for me as many Americans the go to thirst quencher. A real health trap with excess calories, unwanted chemicals, high in sodium and in the case of plastic containers endocrine disrupting contaminates. While Phosphates are fairly bad for you, substituting critic acid is a viable alternative as a one to one substitution. Creating your own syrups, with your personal choice of sweetener can be rewarding on many levels. You can change the level of sweetness, add tartness, liquid vitamins, and amounts of ingredients to your taste. Using a soda siphon kept in the fridge with your syrups, guarantees a cold freshening drink. Treat yourself with fresh fruit garnishes and fresh herbs. Worried about drinking tap water? Use a pitcher filtering system. A human body in a desert environment can use 1.5 to 2 gallons of water a day. Water or Adam’s Ale as it was called by soda jerks is the nutrient of life.

The old-time recipe for cherry phosphate and other phosphate soda recipes are taken from “The Dispenser’s Formulary or Soda Water Guide” compiled by the editorial staff of The Soda Fountain, published by D. O. Haynes & Co., New York, in 1915.

This drink is so universally dispensed that a formula for it is hardly necessary here, but it might be mentioned that a little orange syrup in a mineral-water glass, a little acid phosphate squirted into it, carbonated water from the coarse stream enough to nearly fill the glass, and cracked ice or not, as the occasion or the drinker may require, the whole well stirred with a spoon, constitutes this most popular, perhaps, of all orange drinks.

One ounce cherry syrup, 4 dashes of phosphate. Fill glass with carbonated water, using coarse stream; stir well with spoon.

Cherry syrup, 1 ounce; root beer, 4 ounces; phosphate, 2 dashes. Draw syrup in 10-ounce glass and fill half full with carbonated water, fine stream, then draw in carbonated root beer and add dash of phosphate.

Pineapple syrup, 2 ounces; solution of acid phosphate, 3 dashes. Half fill a soda glass with crushed ice, pour over it the syrup and phosphate, fill with carbonated water, stir and drain into a mineral glass. Price–5 cents.

Fill an 8- or 9-ounce glass with finely shaved ice, add three dashes of solution of acid phosphate, and then cover the ice with orange syrup or syrup of any desired flavor; serve with spoon. Sells quickly in hot weather for 10 cents.

Raspberry syrup, 3/4 ounce; orange syrup, 3/4 ounce; lemon syrup, 1 ounce; lime syrup, 1/4 ounce; solution of acid phosphates, 1 dash; cracked ice, 1/2 glass. Mix in a 10-ounce glass and decorate with slices of orange and pineapple, and a maraschino cherry. Serve with spoon and straws.

Place in a 10-ounce glass: orange syrup, 2 ounces; grape juice, 1 ounce; acid phosphates, 3 dashes; a little fine ice. Shake, fill with carbonated water, and strain. Price–10 cents.

Orange syrup, 1/2 ounce; ginger ale, 1/2 ounce; grape syrup, 1/2 ounce; pineapple syrup, 1/2 ounce; acid phosphate, 2 dashes; fresh mint leaves, 4; shaved ice, 1/2 glass. Press the mint to the sides of the glass, then add coarse stream carbonated water to fill the glass. Stir and serve with straws. Decorate with fresh mint. Price–10 ounces, 10 cents.

One egg, one ounce lemon syrup, one-half ounce red raspberry syrup, four dashes of acid phosphates, shaved ice. Shake thoroughly, then fill the mixing glass nearly full with coarse stream, then fizz (the addition of carbonated soda water). This makes a very light, foamy acid drink that should be poured back and forth two or three times in order not to have it all foam.

By leaving out the phosphate and adding four ounces of milk and two ounces ice cream, you have another delicious egg drink but NOT egg phosphate. Price–First formula, 10 cents; second formula, 15 cents. (A. G. Knights)

One egg, 1-1/2 ounces lemon syrup, 1-1/2 ounces orange syrup, 6 dashes phosphate, 2 pieces of ice. Shake it well. Strain and serve with nutmeg.