Advertisement for a fermented-milk drink, 1900.
Whither the Bulgarzoon?
Bulgaria? Kalamazoo? Mattoon?
Why vanished Zoolak, lackaday?
I do not see these offered at
Soda fountains of today.
Yesterday’s post on the new Lincoln Park Starfruit Cafe got me thinking about soured-milk drinks. Starfruit’s Twitter page describes it as “Chicago’s premier frozen kefir parlor,” which is funny, because Starfruit’s two locations are Chicago’s only frozen kefir parlors, and possibly the whole country’s.
Although it’s readily available in local grocery stores, you’d be hard-pressed to find kefir, frozen or otherwise, at most restaurants today. Yet in the early 20th century, Americans enjoyed a whole zoo of tangy, live-culture, probiotic dairy drinks, including kefir, kumyss, cultured buttermilk, matzoon, Zoolak and Bulgarzoon.
In his Prohibition-era satire, “My Battle with Drink” (from “A Wodehouse Miscellany”) the always delightful P.G. Wodehouse provides a look at the beverages then dispensed by soda fountains.
“Doctor,” I said, covering my face with my hands, “I am a confirmed soda-fiend.”He gave me a long lecture and a longer list of instructions. I must take air and exercise and I must become a total abstainer from sundaes of all descriptions. I must avoid limeade like the plague, and if anybody offered me a Bulgarzoon I was to knock him down and shout for the nearest policeman.
I learned then for the first time what a bitterly hard thing it is for a man in a large and wicked city to keep from soda when once he has got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle began to shun me.
I could not join in their revels and they began to look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid all the good of a month’s abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle. I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an egg-zoolak, before pausing to take breath.
The milky drinks weren’t merely a Prohibition fad. “Bulgarzoon Scientifically Fermented Milk” (131.57 calories at a cost 5 cents at a “‘Quick Lunch’ Restaurant,” according to How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, published in 1916 by the Life Extension Institute), was still popular enough in 1940 that Childs restaurant in New York advertised it on the cover of its menu.
Then as now, the drinks were promoted as extremely healthful: “A most grateful FOOD TONIC in Nervous Derangements of the Stomach and Intestines. Especially valuable in the treatment of Typhoid Fever, Anaemia, Consumption Catarrh and Cancer of the Stomach, etc.” proclaimed R.E. Rhode, pharmaceutical chemist, of the “kefir-kumyss” he made at 504 N. Clark St., in 1900.
Dr. Marka G. Dadirrian, originally of Constantinople, introduced fermented-milk beverages to the United States in 1885, and sold them bottled like soda pop from offices in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. At first he called his product “matzoon,” the Armenian name for yogurt, but later added the trade name Zoolak (”To avoid imitations always specify ZOOLAK”).
The more solid form of yogurt wasn’t produced commercially in the U.S. until 1929, when Armenian immigrants Sarkis and Rose Colombosian started Colombo and Sons Creamery in Andover, Mass. They originally called their product “matzoon,” too, but ultimately switched to calling it “yoghurt,” the Turkish name. (This may have been to distinguish it from the beverage form, or because Dadirrian, apparently a litigatious sort, had tried to trademark “matzoon” and gone about suing competitors. The federal Circuit court for Northern Illinois ultimately declared that the name “matzoon,” having been in use for hundreds of years in Armenia, could not be trademarked.)
Here’s a recipe, from Henley’s Twentieth Century Formulas, Recipes and Processes Containing Ten Thousand Selected Household and Workshop Formulas, Recipes, Processes and Moneymaking Methods for the Practical Use of Manufacturers, Mechanics, Housekeepers and Home Workers (1914):
MATZOON.Add 2 tablespoonfuls of bakers’ yeast to 1 pint of rich milk, which has been slightly warmed, stirring well together and setting aside in a warm room in a pitcher covered with a wet cloth for a time varying from 6 to 12 hours, according to the season or temperature of the room. Take from this, when curdled, 6 tablespoonfuls, add to another pint of milk, and again ferment as before, and continue for five successive fermentations in all, when the product will have become free from the taste of the yeast. As soon as the milk thickens, which is finally to be kept for use, it should be stirred again and then put into a refrigerator to prevent further fermentation. It should be smooth, of the consistence of thick cream, and of a slightly acid taste.
The milk should be prepared fresh every day, and the new supply is made by adding 6 tablespoonfuls of the previous day’s lot to a pint of milk and proceeding as before.
I don’t know what caused Zoolak and its competitors to fall out of fashion. It may be only that soda-fountains themselves became less common after the 1950s, so today you can scarcely find a decent malted milk, let alone a fermented one.
