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Royal Phosphate
Break one egg into a shaker, add two tablespoonfuls of lemon syrup, one tablespoonful of raspberry syrup, four dashes of acid phosphate, and two tablespoonfuls of shaved ice. Shake well. Strain into a glass and add carbonated water.
This is a soda-fountain egg drink, built raw in a shaker and served cold. The egg is never heated at any point, which is the problem.
- Raw egg, no heat stepThe whole egg goes into the shaker and straight into the glass. Nothing in the procedure reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella; the shaved ice and carbonated water only drive the mixture colder. Acid phosphate is far too dilute and too briefly in contact to sanitise anything.
- Who is most at riskShell-egg salmonellosis is most dangerous to small children, older adults, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised. A current recipe using pasteurised egg should be consulted instead.
- Acid phosphateNot a period curiosity but a real ingredient: a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains for sourness without the fruit flavour of citric acid. It is still manufactured for the cocktail and soda trade. A dash from a fountain bottle is a few drops.
- The syrupsFountain syrups of this kind were generally made heavy with sugar, so the proportions here read as very sweet by modern taste.
- Shaved iceShaved, not cubed — it was chipped from a block behind the counter. Its purpose here is to chill and aerate during shaking; it is strained out before the soda water goes in, so the drink is not served over ice.
- YieldOne glass, most of it carbonated water.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon is a Prohibition-era collection of non-alcoholic drink recipes, from a time when the drugstore counter was positioned as a respectable alternative to the saloon. A "phosphate" took its name from acid phosphate, which druggists dispensed as a tonic before it became simply a souring agent; the sharpness it gave a sweet syrup was thought to make a drink refreshing rather than cloying, and phosphates were sold alongside egg drinks and malted milks as nourishing rather than merely pleasant. The whole egg here is doing that nourishing work, and egg lemonades were all standard fountain fare, and were often recommended to invalids and to people who had missed a meal.