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Aurora Shake
To two tablespoonfuls of vanilla syrup, two tablespoonfuls of pineapple syrup, and six tablespoonfuls of sweet cream, add one egg and shaved ice. Shake well and strain into a glass. Serve with straws.
A soda-fountain egg shake from the era when the drugstore counter was the respectable alternative to the saloon. The technique is straightforward; the problem is the whole raw egg, which in this drink is never heated at any point.
- Why the cautionThe egg goes into the shaker raw and is served immediately over ice. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, and the drink is then held cold and sipped slowly through straws. Shell eggs of this period came from a supply chain with far less refrigeration and inspection than today's; the modern equivalent risk is small but real, and it falls hardest on children, older drinkers and anyone immunocompromised. If you want a drink of this kind, use a current recipe written around pasteurized eggs.
- The cream"Sweet cream" means fresh cream as opposed to soured or cultured cream, not sweetened cream. At the period this would frequently have been raw. Six tablespoonfuls is a little under half a cup.
- The syrupsFountain syrups were heavy sugar syrups, flavoured with extract or with the fruit itself. Pineapple syrup was often based on sweetened pineapple juice. Modern bottled syrups differ in strength and sweetness, so the balance of the original will not carry over directly.
- Shaved iceNot cubes. Fountain men worked from a block scraped with a plane, giving fine flakes that melted in the shaker and diluted the drink as it chilled. Cubes in a modern shaker chill with much less dilution.
- YieldOne glass, on the order of seven or eight ounces once strained.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of temperance drink books published as state after state went dry in the years before national Prohibition, a collection of drinks for home making, measured in household tablespoonfuls. Egg drinks were central to that argument. An egg shake or egg phosphate was sold as nourishment as much as refreshment, standing in for the free lunch and the fortifying morning dram, and the whole raw egg was the point rather than an incidental thickener. The soda fountain of this period was still attached to the pharmacy, which is why so many of these formulas read like dispensing instructions, measured in tablespoonfuls and built from house-made syrups.