Make Your Own Soda

Book Preface

I’m a small-batch soda artisan on a mission. I want America to enjoy satisfying, all-natural sodas with flavors so sensational that one taste will blow your mind. No preservatives, no corn syrup, no artificial colors. I founded P&H Soda Co. on the idea that people want to travel back to a simpler time, when the seltzer man delivered to your home, a movie cost pocket change, and enjoying a soda was a way for people of all ages to kick back and celebrate.

In soda’s early days, in the nineteenth century, a glassful was a tonic for what ailed you. It was used as a health food, in many ways. People would blend seltzer with herbs, fruits, and other natural flavors into a delicious, refreshing drink. But over the years, as big business took over, soda became a different thing altogether: chemicals swimming in sugar water, too-sweet fake flavors, guzzled down with no thought. But now—with increased interest in taking foods back to a simpler, fresher, more natural state—I’m taking soda back.

Some of my fondest memories are of going to Rumplemeyer’s—an ice cream parlor that used to be on Central Park South, in Manhattan—with my dad and brother before a ballet or a Broadway show. We’d get so excited to indulge in a scoop of ice cream with a triangular pizzele-style cookie perched at the edge or to dig a long silver spoon into a tall glass to scoop out the first frothy mouthful of a creamy, bubbly ice cream soda. Deciding on my soda flavor was exquisite torture. The waiter would stand patiently by while I considered wild combos like pistachio ice cream with strawberry syrup, or orange sherbet with cherry syrup. More often than not, I chose the classic black and white, bubbling with rich chocolate and fragrant vanilla. I’d alternate between slurping the chocolatey beverage through my straw and digging into the melty vanilla scoop floating and bobbing in my glass. And I remember sitting at a soda-fountain counter with my grandpa Anthony, a jokester with a legendary sweet tooth. We’d sip on sodas while watching the ritual of the soda jerk pulling the gleaming silver handles, pouring syrups into fluted glasses with all the flair of a serious mixologist.