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Raspberry Egg Phosphate
Break an egg into a glass with two tablespoonfuls of raspberry syrup and four tablespoonfuls of cream. Add cracked ice and a dash of acid phosphate. Fill up the glass with soda water and blend by pouring from glass to glass, and serve while foaming.
This is a soda-fountain egg drink of the sort mixed to order across a bar counter, and the egg goes into the glass raw and stays raw. The notes below explain the terms and why the drink cannot be recommended as written.
- The raw egg is the problemNothing in this drink is ever heated. A whole shell egg broken into a cold glass of syrup, cream, ice and soda water carries the risk of Salmonella, which can be present inside an intact, clean-looking egg. Neither the acid phosphate nor the cracked ice reduces that risk in any meaningful way.
- Acid is not a kill stepA dash of acid phosphate lowers the pH slightly and gives the drink its dry, tangy edge, but it is nowhere near acidic enough or held long enough to make raw egg safe. The same is true of the small amount of fruit syrup.
- Cream, served cold and unheatedThe four tablespoons of cream compound the issue. Whatever the period practice for holding cream at the fountain, the concern today is simply that raw egg plus dairy at drinking temperature is a good medium for bacterial growth if the glass stands at all.
- Who is most at riskAnyone can be made ill, but the consequences fall hardest on young children, people over 65, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised. If you want a drink of this style, use a current recipe built on pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg.
- Acid phosphate, for referenceAcid phosphate is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts. It was a standard fountain bottle, used to give sweet drinks a sharpness that citrus could not supply without adding flavour. It is still manufactured for the cocktail and soda trade.
- Raspberry syrupThe fountain syrup of the period was a heavy sugar syrup, with period formulas commonly running in the region of two parts sugar to one of water, flavoured with raspberry juice rather than resembling a thin modern coffee syrup. Two tablespoons was meant to sweeten a glass finished with soda water; the recipe does not state the size of the glass.
- Pouring from glass to glassBefore mechanical mixers this was how a fountain man emulsified egg and cream into carbonated water: two tumblers, poured back and forth to build foam without flattening the soda. The instruction to serve while foaming is the whole point of the drink -- the head does not last.
- YieldOne glass, one serving, made to order.
Egg phosphates belong to the American soda fountain at its height, when the counter was both a drugstore fixture and, in the temperance years, promoted as a respectable alternative to the saloon. "On the water wagon" was the popular phrase for having sworn off drink. The egg drinks were the strongest claim in that case: an egg beaten into cream and soda was sold as nourishment as much as refreshment, a restorative for the run-down, and it let the fountain borrow the vocabulary of the bar, where flips and nogs were also built on raw egg. The phosphate itself is a distinctly American taste, sharp and slightly mineral, and it faded from general use as bottled soft drinks displaced the fountain counter.