Wintergreen soda was a flavored carbonated beverage once popular in North America. The flavoring that was added to wintergreen soda water was "nominally made out of teaberry leaves, or wintergreen."[1] Other regional common names used to describe Gaultheria procumbens included mountain berries, wintergreen plums, or checked berries.[1] Wintergreen soda may have originally been a homemade foodstuff but was ultimately one of the many flavors listed in the catalogs of flavoring companies serving late 19th-century soda fountain proprietors.[2]
Carrie Giddings, a Civil War-era U.S. Army wife, relied on homemade lemon and wintergreen soda waters when she was called upon to host important guests.[3] American nature writer Edwin Way Teale recalled it as a favorite of his childhood in Indiana: "From early days wintergreen was a flavor that gave me my greatest delight. At the ornate Canditorium, on Main Street in Michigan City, I used to reach a seventh heaven and enter in when a wintergreen soda, with coral-pink foam, was set before me."[4]
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editReferences
edit- ^ a b "An Exhilarating Tipple". The Morning News. 1892-12-11. p. 5. Retrieved 2023-09-10.
- ^ Levin, Judith (2021-08-12). Soda and Fizzy Drinks: A Global History. Reaktion Books. ISBN 978-1-78914-490-1.
- ^ Campbell, Robin D. (2020-10-28). Mistresses of the Transient Hearth: American Army Officers' Wives and Material Culture, 1840-1880. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-14373-7.
- ^ edwin way teale (1943). Dune Boy. Internet Archive. p. 155.