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Hot Lemon and Orange
Put a small piece of ice into a shaker with one egg, two tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup, and two tablespoonfuls of orange syrup. Shake well, strain into a glass, add hot water and a dash of acid phosphate. A grating of nutmeg is an addition.
A hot soda-fountain drink from the era when the fountain sold winter beverages alongside cold ones. The technique is straightforward; the problem is the egg.
- The raw egg is the reason to skip itA whole egg is shaken cold and strained into the glass, and hot water from a fountain tap is poured over it. That water is nowhere near hot enough, and does not stay hot long enough, to bring the egg to a temperature that would kill Salmonella. The egg is served essentially raw.
- Why the hot water does not helpEgg white begins to set around 145F and needs to hold there for minutes to be safe. Diluted into a tall glass of syrup and water, the temperature drops immediately into the range where the drink is simply warm. If you want a hot egg drink, use a current recipe written with a cooked or pasteurized egg base.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, iron and magnesium salts, widely used at soda fountains for a dry tartness that citric acid does not give. It fell out of general use mid-century but is made again for cocktail and fountain hobbyists. It is not the same thing as lemon juice and cannot be substituted with it.
- Lemon and orange syrupFountain syrups of the period were generally heavy, often something like two parts sugar to one part water, flavoured with juice and peel oil, and sweeter and thicker than a modern squash or cordial. Two tablespoons of each is about an ounce of syrup apiece.
- The shakerIce and vigorous shaking serve to foam the egg; the drink is then strained off the ice before the hot water goes in.
- YieldOne glass. The recipe does not specify how much hot water to add, so the finished volume is left to the maker.
Soda fountains did steady winter trade in hot drinks, and formularies of the temperance period are full of them: hot lemonades, hot beef bouillon, hot malted milk, hot chocolate, and egg drinks like this one, often said to borrow their structure from the alcoholic flip. The egg gave body and a certain respectability, the acid phosphate gave the sour bite that a drinker might otherwise have looked for in something stronger. Books published under titles invoking Uncle Sam and the water wagon were aimed squarely at druggists and fountain men expecting to sell more soft drinks as legal restrictions on alcohol tightened, and their contents are less about home cooking than about stocking a counter. Acid phosphate is generally treated as the clearest marker of that origin: it was a pharmacy product before it was a beverage ingredient, and its presence is often taken to place a recipe in the fountain trade.