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Maryland Shake
Break one egg into a shaker, add the juice of half a lemon, four tablespoonfuls of grape juice, four tablespoonfuls of ice-cold water, and two teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar. Shake well. In a tall glass place a layer of cracked ice, a layer of pineapple sherbet, and a layer of grated pineapple. Pour over the strained fruit juice and garnish with mint.
A temperance-era shaken fruit drink. The mechanics are simple, but the whole egg goes into the glass raw and is never heated, which is why this one belongs on the page rather than in the shaker.
- The raw egg is the problemA whole shell egg is broken into the shaker and served without any heat step; lemon juice and shaking do not pasteurize it. Salmonella in intact raw eggs is the specific risk, and it is meaningful for children, older drinkers, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised — much of the audience a soft-drink book was written for. Use a current recipe if you want a fruit flip.
- No refrigeration assumption behind itAn egg in this period was often days old and kept in a cool larder rather than at a controlled 40F, and the book's readers were not thinking about pathogens at all. The instruction reflects that world, not ours.
- Grape juice then and now"Grape juice" in an American temperance book of this period most likely means unfermented Concord juice of the Welch's type, sweeter and more aggressively purple than a modern varietal juice. Four tablespoonfuls is a quarter cup.
- Grated pineapplePineapple shredded on a coarse grater, juice and all, rather than neat rings; canned grated or crushed pineapple was also available by this date. Canned crushed pineapple is the nearest equivalent, though it is packed in syrup and much sweeter.
- Pineapple sherbetPeriod sherbet was a water ice with a little milk or beaten egg white, lighter and icier than the dense dairy sherbet sold now.
- YieldOne tall glass, roughly 10 to 12 ounces once the ice and sherbet are counted.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of non-alcoholic drink books published in the years around national Prohibition, when hotels, drugstore fountains and hostesses all needed something to serve that was not a cocktail but did not look like a glass of water. The vocabulary is borrowed wholesale from the bar: shaker, strain, garnish with mint, and here the structure of an egg flip with grape juice standing in for spirits. The "Maryland" tag is decorative rather than geographic in any documented way — drink names of the period attached states and cities freely — while grape juice itself carried a temperance charge, having been promoted since the late nineteenth century as the respectable, unfermented alternative to wine, famously for communion. Layering cracked ice, sherbet and grated fruit in a tall glass is soda-fountain technique, the same visual logic that produced the parfait and the ice-cream soda.