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Strawberry Delight
Break an egg into a shaker, add four tablespoonfuls of sweet cream and four tablespoonfuls of strawberry syrup. Add finely cracked ice and shake until well blended. Strain into a glass and fill up with soda water.
A soda-fountain egg cream in the older sense of the term: a whole raw egg shaken with cream and fruit syrup, then lengthened with charged water. The egg is the problem.
- Raw shell egg, never heatedNothing in this drink reaches any temperature at all — the egg goes from shell to shaker to glass, chilled by cracked ice. Raw shell eggs carry a risk of Salmonella that cold, sugar and carbonation do nothing to reduce. A current recipe using an egg product intended to be eaten raw should be consulted instead.
- Why the fountain got away with itMade to order and served immediately into a cold glass, an egg drink limited the window for bacterial growth, but the hazard was not removed.
- Sweet creamIn fountain usage this simply means fresh unsoured cream, roughly what is now sold as light or single cream — not whipped, not sweetened.
- Strawberry syrupA fountain syrup of the period was a heavy sugar syrup, near-saturated, flavoured with fruit juice and often coloured. Modern bottled strawberry syrups vary considerably in strength and sweetness, so four tablespoons may not be an equivalent measure.
- Soda waterCharged water, drawn under pressure and often colder and more strongly carbonated than bottled seltzer. Nothing sweetened is meant here.
- YieldOne glass. The recipe does not specify a size.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of temperance-era drink books that appeared as national Prohibition approached — the title puns on the old phrase for swearing off liquor, being "on the water wagon." Books like it repurposed the vocabulary and showmanship of the bar for the soda fountain, and the egg drink stood in relation to the flip and the gin fizz: a whole egg shaken hard for body and foam, then stretched with charged water. Fruit syrups such as strawberry and raspberry were among the common flavourings of the American fountain in this period, made on the premises or bought by the gallon. The drink's texture — creamy, foaming, faintly custardy — was the point.