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Gloucester Shake
Mix one tablespoonful of lemon syrup, two tablespoonfuls of pineapple syrup, and one egg. Shake, and strain into a glass one fourth full of cracked ice. Add soda water and a little cinnamon.
This is a soda-fountain "shake" of the old school: flavoring syrups, a whole raw egg, cracked ice and carbonated water, shaken and served immediately. The egg is the problem.
- Raw egg, never heatedThe whole egg goes into the shaker and into the glass without ever reaching a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Soda water, ice and fruit syrup do nothing to make it safe; the drink is served cold and consumed at once. Period fountain practice took a fresh egg to be a safe egg, which is not an assumption worth carrying forward.
- Not a case for judgmentUnlike raw egg in a batter or custard base, there is no later cooking step here to fall back on. If you want an egg drink of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg, and follow its handling instructions.
- "Shake" did not mean ice cream"Shake" did not mean ice cream here -- This shake is syrup plus egg, shaken with ice and finished with soda water; no ice cream or milk appears in the formula. Expect something closer to a thin flip than to a modern milkshake.
- Lemon and pineapple syrupBoth were common fountain syrups: sweetened sugar syrup flavored with fruit juice or extract. Period fountain syrups were generally heavier and sweeter than many bottled cordials sold now, so the sweetness of the finished drink will depend heavily on the syrup used.
- CinnamonThe recipe says only "a little cinnamon" and does not specify the form; ground cinnamon dusted over the finished glass is the usual reading, in the way a bartender dusts a flip.
- YieldOne glass, with roughly a fourth of it packed with cracked ice before the soda water goes in.
Books like this one are generally associated with the years around national Prohibition, when the American soda fountain absorbed both the customers and much of the technique of the saloon: the shaker, the strainer, the crushed ice, the dusting of spice over the top, the drink named after a place or a person. The egg drink was the clearest inheritance of all, descending from the flips and nogs that bartenders had been shaking for a century and pressed into service as a nourishing, respectable, alcohol-free order. Fountain men seem to have been sold on eggs as food value rather than flavor, and trade literature of the period is often said to have promoted egg drinks as something a clerk could sell to a customer who wanted a lunch as much as a refreshment. The name "Gloucester" is not explained in the book; fountain formulas were routinely christened after towns, hotels and regular customers, and most such names probably have no recoverable story behind them.