A couple of years ago, I was watching this show on the History Channel. It was about old fashioned soda fountains. They were all the rage in the 1950’s, apparently. And the people who manned them (soda jerks, they were called), were quite resourceful in what they could make.
Anyway, this one drink called for a teaspoon of phosphoric acid, I recall. I forget the exact name of the drink (bear with me, it’s been a couple of years). But that got me to wondering.
Where do you buy phosphoric acid? How do you use it? And this is important: what does it taste like?
I just know that they put it in many sodas now (cola, for example). But darned if I know why.
I’m hoping you can all educate me on the matter. As I said, at one time it was a staple of drugstore soda fountains.
Now, I must say, I don’t know for certain if they are “real” phosphates or just syrup + soda water. I’m leaning towards them being the latter, as all the other sodas on the menu are made with ice cream, so I’m assuming “phosphate” is just a way to distinguish them as ice-cream-less sodas and have that nice “old timey” name. I don’t know for certain.
And this is the acid phosphate you want for your drinks (or similar. I’m not saying that brand, but “acid phosphate” seems to be the name it’s sold under.) From what I’ve been reading up about it, it just seems to be an acidifying component that does not have much flavor of its own (as opposed to something like citric acid, which has a definite fruit component to the flavor.)
