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Springfield Shake
Mix two tablespoonfuls each of strawberry, pineapple, and vanilla syrups with eight tablespoonfuls of sweet cream. Add one egg and chopped ice. Shake well, strain into glass, and add soda water.
A soda-fountain egg shake of the sort mixed to order in drugstores. The measurements are straightforward, but the drink is built on a raw shell egg that is never heated at any point, which puts it outside what can be recommended today.
- The raw egg is the problemOne whole egg goes into the shaker and is served immediately over ice with cold cream and soda water. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact, clean shell egg. A commercial recipe using pasteurized egg product should be followed instead.
- Cold does not helpChopped ice and chilled cream slow bacterial growth but kill nothing. The drink is served cold and never heated at any stage.
- Cream at fountain temperature"Sweet cream" means fresh, unsoured cream. Cream of this period may not have been pasteurized, and raw cream carries its own risk of Listeria and Campylobacter, independent of the egg.
- What the syrups wereFountain syrups were heavy sugar syrups flavored with fruit juice or extract, and were generally sweeter and denser than many bottled syrups sold today, so the stated measurements may read differently in a modern kitchen.
- Soda waterThis is plain carbonated water drawn from a pressurized fountain, not a sweetened soft drink. The quantity is left to the maker, filling the glass after straining.
- MeasurementsEight tablespoons of cream is half a cup; the syrups total six tablespoons, or three-eighths of a cup. Yield is one glass, and by sugar content alone a substantial thing to drink.
Books like this one belong to the era of the soda fountain, when the drugstore counter was promoted as the respectable alternative to the saloon. Egg drinks were a standard part of the fountain repertoire, sold as nourishing rather than merely refreshing, and a whole raw egg cracked into the shaker gave body and a lasting foam that no syrup could supply on its own. Fountain drinks were commonly named for towns, colleges, hotels and regular customers, and no story is recorded for this one beyond the counter where it was called for.