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Daytona Phosphate
Mix three tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup, three tablespoonfuls of orange syrup, add one egg and five or six dashes of acid phosphate. Put in a ladleful of lemon ice and shake until very cold. Fill up the glass with carbonated water.
A soda-fountain formula from the era when the counter man worked from a syrup rail and a shaker. Two things stand between it and a modern glass: the whole raw egg, and a set of ingredients that no longer sit in a home kitchen.
- The raw eggA whole egg goes into the shaker and is never heated at any point; the drink is served cold and immediately. Salmonella in a shell egg is a real risk in an uncooked preparation, and nothing in this formula — not the acid phosphate, not the carbonation — reliably inactivates it. This is why the recipe should not be made as printed.
- Acidity is not pasteurisationAcid phosphate, five or six dashes of it, is an acid solution of phosphoric acid with mineral salts, used to give fountain drinks a dry, tart bite. It sharpens flavour; it does not sterilise. The same is true of the lemon syrup.
- Acid phosphateA genuine soda-fountain staple, sold by the gallon to druggists and largely gone from ordinary shelves by mid-century. It has been revived by cocktail suppliers and is a real food-grade product — the problem with this drink lies elsewhere.
- Lemon and orange syrupFountain syrups of the period were heavy sugar syrups, commonly flavoured with fresh juice and oil of the peel; the exact proportions varied from manual to manual.
- Lemon iceNot a scoop of sorbet in the modern sense but the fountain's water ice — sweetened lemon juice and water, frozen and kept cold behind the counter, served with a ladle as the recipe specifies. It supplies both the chill and part of the sugar.
- If you want the drinkUse a pasteurised shell egg or pasteurised liquid egg in place of the raw egg, rather than working from this text as printed.
American drug-store fountains of the 1890s and 1900s sold a whole class of drinks built on acid phosphate, and the egg phosphate — a raw egg shaken with syrup, phosphate and soda — was among the most popular, sold as much for nourishment as for refreshment. Fountain manuals of the period are full of these named formulas. The soda fountain was often promoted as the respectable counter-service alternative to the saloon, and temperance-minded collections were arguing, glass by glass, that a man could be given something cold, sweet and bracing without whiskey in it.