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Lemon Egg Phosphate
Put one egg, three tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup, and half a teaspoonful of acid phosphate into a shaker, with enough soda water to fill a glass. Shake well and pour from shaker to glass. A grating of nutmeg may be added.
A soda fountain formula from the temperance era, built at a marble counter with equipment and stock syrups no home kitchen keeps. The raw egg is the reason it cannot be reproduced as printed.
- The raw eggThe whole egg goes into the shaker uncooked and is never heated at any point. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella internally, and a cold drink neither kills it nor stops it multiplying; the acid phosphate and lemon syrup are nowhere near strong enough to sterilise anything. Use a current recipe if you want a drink of this kind.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to druggists by the gallon and used across the fountain trade for a sour bite without the fruit flavour of citric acid. It disappeared from general sale for decades and is again made in small batches for the cocktail trade. It is not the same thing as phosphoric acid from a chemical supplier.
- Lemon syrupFountain lemon syrup was a heavy sugar syrup, flavoured with lemon in some combination of juice, citric acid and oil of lemon depending on the formula. Three tablespoons is a substantial dose of sugar, not a splash of cordial.
- Soda waterCharged water from a fountain, drawn under pressure and more aggressively carbonated than bottled club soda. "Enough to fill a glass" is left to the operator; no size is given.
- The shakerA fountain shaker was a metal tumbler, shaken briefly by hand. Shaking an egg drink was presumably for foam, though the text says only to shake well and pour from shaker to glass.
- NutmegGrating nutmeg over an egg drink was common fountain practice, carried over from eggnog and milk punch.
- YieldOne glass, served immediately.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to a genre of temperance-adjacent drink books that flourished while the American soda fountain was at its height, offering the bar's showmanship without its alcohol. Phosphates were the fountain's workhorse: a shot of acid phosphate, a flavouring syrup and charged water, sour and bracing in a way plain sweet soda was not, and widely sold on the strength of half-medical claims about phosphorus restoring the nerves and the brain. Egg drinks sat alongside them as the substantial end of the menu, sold as nourishment rather than refreshment, and often described as something close to a meal in themselves. The combination here, egg and phosphate and lemon, is the two ideas run together, and its presence in a temperance book suggests how far the drugstore counter had come to occupy social ground the saloon once held.