A hundred years ago, a soda fountain wasn’t something you pressed a cup up against so a couple dozen ounces of a delicious ready-to-drink beverage would be poured into your cup.
Back in the day, fizzy soft drinks were prepared more like a drink at Starbucks — with a pump of flavor mixed into a base beverage.
Take a little trip back to 1921, and see exactly how soda jerks (what the guys behind the counter were really called) put together the ideal six-ounce glass of cola the good old-fashioned way.
Old-fashioned Coca-Cola soda fountain instructions from 1921
Served Perfectly! How it is done with America’s Favorite Beverage
You meet few men with skill like that of the soda fountain expert. He takes a six-ounce glass and draws just one ounce of Coca-Cola syrup — the precise base for the best drink — service that eliminates waste.
Take a six-ounce glass, not a larger or a smaller one.
One press on the syrup syphon, with the soda man’s sense of touch for exact measurements, gives one ounce of Coca-Cola syrup — you know just where it should come to in the glass to be precisely the right amount.
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Pull the silver faucet for five ounces of pure, ice-cold carbonated water — with the one ounce of syrup, this quantity fills the glass.
With a deft, sure hand he adds the ice-cold, sparkling water. It looks for an instant as though the glass would overflow, but it doesn’t. The amount is five ounces — exactly the right proportion.
You may take up a bit of the proportion of water with ice, as a small cube or crushed. Stir with a spoon.
Done quickly? You bet. The rising bubbles just have time to come to a bead that all but o’er-tops the brim as the glass is passed over the marble fountain for the first delicious and refreshing sip.
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That’s the soda fountain recipe for the perfect drink, perfectly served. Coca-Cola is easily served perfectly because Coca-Cola syrup is prepared with the finished art that comes from the practice of a lifetime. Good things of nine sunny climes, nine different countries, are properly combined in every ounce.
It has all been done in flashes. The glass is before you before there is time for conscious waiting. Thirst is answered by the expert with Coca-Cola in its highest degree of deliciousness and refreshingness.
Guard against the natural mistakes of too much syrup and too large a glass. Any variation from the ratio of one ounce of syrup to five ounces of water, and some- thing of the rare quality of Coca-Cola is lost; you don’t get Coca-Cola at the top of its flavor and at its highest appeal.
Coca-Cola is sold everywhere with universal popularity, because perfect service and not variations is a soda fountain rule.
