Thursday, September 01, 2011
Definstration
I was never afraid to try my hand at a little experimental cuisine every once in a while, not even as a child. Sometimes this produced felicitous consequences, like pineapple chicken; sometimes, unfortunate ones, such as the A1 sundae. But perhaps the longest-lasting and incongruousest of these was my own home-brewed soda. I’ve racked my brains, such as they are, and still I can’t remember how exactly I made it. And I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
It seemed to me to be an easy path to riches, simply to concoct a new flavor of soda and market it to the multitudes. Who doesn’t like soda? Nobody! And who’s already tired of that same old set of flavors soda comes in? Everybody! Cola-rootbeer-cherry-orange-grape-lemony-gingerale? That’s really all we’ve got to pick from? As far as I was concerned, the motley outliers like Cactus Cooler and Squirt proved my point: their rampant popularity showed how the people craved new frontiers of refreshment. Somehow, this was actually the path of my logic. It foretold my impending failure, but I was not yet prepared to read those tea leaves.
All that remained, then, between myself and the riches and accolades of a veritable Moishe Celray was the small matter of formulating a new flavor of fizzy beverage. But having already had my creative watershed moment in conceptualizing the opportunity itself, I felt sure that the heavy lifting was already behind me. This was going to be a piece of carbonated cake.
My exploration of the available spectrum of new soda flavors was swiftly accomplished. I first quickly considered and rejected chocolate and other confectionacious options. Chocolate was too cloying and obvious, and insufficiently unique; I didn’t have the means to extract chewing gum flavors and figured they were probably already trade-secret protected; too many people seemed inexplicably not to care for liquorice and Pixie Stix weren’t distinctively-enough flavored. It really seemed that fruit flavors were my best bet. But which fruit was both untried, and assured of an enthusiastic reception?
I wanted something with a strong flavor that wasn’t even approximately represented in the existing marketplace. I ruminated upon pomegranate, and watermelon, but the essential extraction process seemed like it would be prohibitively challenging to a person of my limited resources and patience. I’d do better with something to which I already enjoyed immediate access in liquified form. The fridge, were I but to peruse its splendiferous shelves, indubitably held untapped promise.
Indubitably, indeed: a minute’s browsing in the Frigidaire divulged the constituent ingredients of a refreshingly effervescent beverage the likes of which the world had never anticipated, and that would perforce be a commercial success sufficient to raise me to the legendary status of “Dr" Billy Pepper or Orinthal Yuhu.
There wasn’t much in the fridge to work with, realistically. Salad dressings and condiments were, obviously, nonstarters, and most of the fruit juices were already yesterday’s news. Milk? Picklebrine? Ridiculous; unspeakable. The process of elimination went swiftly until I was only left with a single possibility, and - to paraphrase Conan* - once I’d dismissed all the impossible choices, that which remained, no matter how improbable, must be soda.
I pulled the likely ingredients from their various shelves, arranged them attractively on a counter-top, and prepared myself to be a conduit for culinary genius. Lemon juice, prune juice, tonic water: the coolers and vending machines certainly weren’t glutted with this combination. My marketing task would be formidable but that just assured me even greater opportunities for eventual profit. I’d corner the market on lemon-prune soda with the tangy taste of quinine. All I’d need to do is make America crave it. And even that seemed easy enough, if I could just get away from the “P” word.
Prunes hadn’t fared too well on the PR front, despite actually beginning with those letters. Prunes were closely identified with old people, and fingertips left too long in the bathtub. I understood that they were also associated somehow with excretory functions in some mildly comedic way. That was a lot for my soda to overcome - but a great name would surely resolve that small problem. Hell, “Jell-O” got people clamoring for congealed horse-bone goop. A fortuitous appellation could mend all faults. And since I’d already created a whole new genre of soda, just coming up with a name for it now couldn’t be too tricky, could it?
I wanted something that invoked a certain historicity, as if it has been around all along but was only newly available on the local grocer’s shelves. An ersatz heirloom denomination that struck a familiar-feeling non-pruney non-quininific chord. The enigma machine in my head just kept spinning the rollers and testing combinations of letters for a couple of days until I hit on the perfect solution for my perfect solution: I would call it Finster Soda, a denominator both euphonious and redolent - and the thirsty world would beat a path to my door for it. In theory, anyway.
(I was sure - right up to the moment I typed this up - that I’d invented this name myself. My dad thought it was a nice choice because “Fenster” means “dark” in yiddish. Except, of course, it means “window.” But now I suspect that I had subliminally retained the name of the villain “Baby Face Finster” from 1954’s unforgettable (except by me till now) “Baby Buggy Bunny.” Well I guess the internet is finally good for something.)
Finster Soda was opaque and sparkled with a bitter, cloying flavor that I, for one, found strangely compelling. Then again, I was a strangely compulsive child, and my fascinations were not often reciprocated by the public at large. I was able to persuade a few relatives and family friends to sample my liquid creation, but getting them to take that second glass proved to be a much harder sell. I moved from spending my idle time designing bottle labels and ad campaigns ("Make mine FINSTER!") to tweaking the formula - but only in minor ways and to minimal effect. Finster Soda was what it was; it had integrity. If the world wasn’t ready for such an uncompromising beverage, then the world would have to grow up a little. Finster Soda could wait. And that’s just what it did.
Forty or so years later, I want to remember it in glowing terms - healthful, invigorating, delicious. There’s also an outside possibility it wasn’t exactly like that. After all, I did allow the recipe to sink into historical obscurity. Which might, as I mentioned, not have been such a terrible thing. Painful as it is to admit, I might not be another Amadeo Sarsaparilla. The taste of reality is bitter - but not bitter enough to get me brewing up any more Finster Soda as a palliative. I’ll just take my quinine straight and chew my prunes for the nonce.
* (Doyle)
