a phosphate worse than death

Every day, as I was saying only recently on Twitter, is a school day. And so I'd like to share with you a thing I learnt today as some sort of improving moral fable and a salutary lesson on the perils of assuming things, because if you do that you will, as I'm sure you're aware (at least I assume you are), make an ASS out of U and ME.

Anyway, you'll all be familiar with Trout Mask Replica, the seminal musical achievement of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, indeed I expect you spin that baby up once a week for the whole family to enjoy. Among the singalong pop nuggets on the album (released in 1969) is a song called Orange Claw Hammer, delivered a cappella in its album version. It's, erm, an acquired taste, which is partly why this version, supposedly from a radio broadcast in about 1973 and supposedly featuring Frank Zappa on acoustic guitar, is such a revelation, resembling, as one of the YouTube commenters says, a "psychotic sea shanty". It is genuinely, unironically, great, and the lyrics do make a crazy sort of sense, while still being fairly bonkers.

One of the things that I assumed was a bit of trademark Beefheartian wordplay was this bit:

Come, little one, with your little old dimpled fingers
Gimme one and I'll buy you a cherry phosphate

"Cherry phosphate", hahaha, I thought - classic Beefheart, juxtaposing fruity innocence with harsh incongruous chemistry to produce an arresting image while being literally physically impossible and/or poisonous if anyone ever actually attempted it.

I can't remember how I came across the link to this article that reveals that not only was a cherry phosphate an actual thing, but that phosphate drinks more generally were a popular item in post-war America. That link contains some instructions for extracting additional flavourings from cherry bark, with the reassurance that in the resulting brew "the amount of hydrogen cyanide produced is minuscule", which is about as reassuring as learning that cheap red wine contains only a relatively modest amount of arsenic. Basically what these drinks had in common was the use of acid phosphate (a solution of phosphoric acid with some mineral salts added) as an acidifying agent in place of, say, lemon or lime juice. You can still get it in certain niche outlets if you really want some. Similarly if you want to make an Ammonia Coke then you can still acquire the ingredients, though since I'm not partial to either ammonia or coke I'll be giving it a miss.