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The Breslin
Mix two tablespoonfuls of strawberry syrup, one tablespoonful of raspberry syrup, one tablespoonful of pineapple syrup with three tablespoonfuls of sweet cream. Add one egg and cracked ice. Shake thoroughly, strain into a glass, and fill up with soda water.
A soda-fountain egg drink of the type sold across the counter in 1919, when the hotel bars had just been closed. The syrups and cream are unremarkable; the whole egg is the problem.
- Why the cautionThe egg goes in raw and nothing in the procedure heats it — shaking with cracked ice and topping with soda water keeps the drink close to freezing throughout. There is no step at which Salmonella on or in the shell would be killed, and this was served immediately to whoever ordered it. If you want an egg drink today, use a current recipe built on pasteurised eggs.
- The syrupsFountain syrups of the period were simple syrup cooked with fruit or fruit juice, thick and heavily sweetened — closer to a snow-cone syrup than to a modern fruit coulis or a bar syrup. Pineapple syrup was often made from canned pineapple and its sugar.
- Sweet cream"Sweet" here only means not soured — ordinary fresh cream, as distinct from the sour cream or clabber a kitchen would also have had on hand. A light cream or half-and-half is the nearest modern match.
- Soda waterFountain soda was drawn under pressure and was likely more sharply carbonated than bottled club soda. The recipe specifies only "a glass" and to "fill up", so the proportion of soda to the syrup-and-cream base is left to the maker.
- MeasuresThree tablespoonfuls of cream is a scant quarter cup; the four tablespoons of combined syrup make about 2 fl oz. The recipe yields one drink.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon (1919) collected non-alcoholic drinks at the moment American hotel bars were going dry, and a number of its recipes carry the names of hotels — this one after the Hotel Breslin at Broadway and 29th Street in Manhattan. The recipes read like bar formulas with the spirits struck out: the shaker, the cracked ice, the strainer, the egg for body all belong to the pre-Prohibition cocktail repertoire. Egg drinks of this kind were familiar bar and fountain trade in the period.