The Wild West of Yester-Year
Did They Really Drink Sarsaparilla?
By Rachel Kovaciny
All my life, I have
enjoyed trying new foods based on the books I read and the
movies I watch. If fictional characters make or enjoyed a
specific food or drink I’ve never tasted, I get a hankering
to try it for myself. For years, I wanted to try steak and
kidney pie thanks to the pilot episode of Five Mile
Creek (1983-1985). A story in Highlights magazine made
me yearn to try artichokes. The Baby-Sitters Club
books convinced me bagels with cream cheese and lox would be
amazing. A casual mention of celery root in the 1996 Gwyneth
Paltrow version of Emma had me curious about what
it tasted like. And you can guess what I wanted to try
because my family loved The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975).
Unfortunately for
me, my parents were not adventurous eaters, and some of
those things weren’t available in the rural Michigan of my
childhood. No matter how much I wanted to try steak and
kidney pie, artichokes, bagels with cream cheese and lox,
and celery root, it was no use. And as for apple dumplings,
the closest I ever got was apple pie, which is delicious,
but I knew it wasn’t quite the same.
Wonder of wonders,
my dad bought me a bottle of sarsaparilla at a convenience
store as a special treat while on vacation one summer. Did
it disappoint me that it tasted like root beer? Not a bit! I
like root beer, and it was different enough it felt new,
exotic, and old-fashioned all at the same time.
During the classic
Cowboy Era of 1865-1885, many saloons, bars, and restaurants
served bottled sarsaparilla all across the United States.
But it probably wasn’t as widely enjoyed in the Old West as
popular culture has led us to believe. Thanks to the fiction
of Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, and to movies like Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), we now equate the drink
with thirsty young cowboys and temperance-conscious
schoolmarms. Advertising and personal accounts from the
frontier prove they had sarsaparilla as an alternative to
alcohol and as medicine, but it may have been consumed more
for its medicinal effects than anything else.
In the United
States, sarsaparilla is made from birch oil and dried
sassafras tree roots, since both were easier to get in the
1700/1800s than the vine, which had to be imported from
Central or South America. Flavors like vanilla, licorice,
and wintergreen were added, whether it’s brewed from the
sarsaparilla vine or birch oil and sassafras. Carbonation
was traditionally achieved by allowing the drink to ferment
or by adding carbon dioxide gas or carbonated water.