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Alhambra Shake
Mix in a glass one tablespoonful each of vanilla and strawberry syrups; add one egg, one half teaspoonful of malted milk, two or three dashes of acid phosphate, and fill to within two inches of the top with sweet milk. Shake well, strain into a clean glass, and add soda water and a grating of nutmeg.
A soda-fountain egg shake from the Prohibition years. The technique is sound, but the whole egg goes into the glass raw and never gets near a temperature that would make it safe.
- Why the cautionA whole raw shell egg is shaken into cold milk and served immediately. Nothing in the drink is heated, and the acid phosphate and syrups do not pasteurise anything. Salmonella in or on an egg survives this preparation intact.
- Not a cooked custardUnlike a boiled eggnog or a cooked custard base, there is no stage at which the egg protein sets. If you want a drink of this type, use a current recipe written for it rather than adapting this one.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, standard fountain stock for adding tartness without fruit flavour. It disappeared from most soda counters by mid-century, though small producers have revived it for cocktail bars.
- Malted milkThe powdered blend of malted barley, wheat flour and evaporated milk sold from the 1880s onward. Modern malted milk powder is the same product; the malt-flavoured drink mixes with added cocoa are not.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from sour milk or buttermilk, which were separate kitchen staples in this period.
- The vessel"Fill to within two inches of the top" implies a tall fountain mixing glass rather than a serving glass; the drink is shaken and then strained into a clean glass, presumably to hold back the chalaza and any shell fragments.
- YieldOne drink.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the small flood of soft-drink manuals published as national Prohibition approached, offering a repertoire that sounded as elaborate as a cocktail list. Egg drinks were a fountain speciality long before that, sold as much for nourishment as refreshment; the egg, the malted milk and the milk together were promoted as a light meal in a glass. The name is one of the trade's exotic labels, usually associated with the Moorish palace at Granada, applied to a drink that has nothing Spanish about it. Acid phosphate, the one ingredient here that has genuinely vanished from ordinary use, was the fountain's all-purpose souring agent, doing the work that lemon juice or citric acid does now.