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The Commonwealth
To one and one half tablespoonfuls each of pineapple and vanilla syrups, add one egg and a ladleful of vanilla ice cream. Shake with crushed ice and add soda water.
This is a soda-fountain formula built on a raw shell egg that is never heated at any stage, which is the reason it cannot be recommended as written. The notes below explain the hazard and translate the fountain vocabulary.
- The raw egg is the problemA whole uncooked egg is dropped into a cold drink, shaken with ice, and served immediately. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would destroy Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact, clean shell egg.
- Cold shaking is not a controlShaking with crushed ice holds the mixture in the range where bacteria survive comfortably. The acid from the pineapple syrup is far too weak and too brief in contact to do anything useful.
- Why 1910 could ignore itWhy the period could ignore it -- Eggs were cracked fresh into the drink and it was consumed at once, and the egg drink was regarded as a tonic rather than a risk. Modern egg-handling advice exists because the dominant serotype and the scale of distribution both changed after the 1970s.
- Ice cream adds a second cold-chain questionIce cream adds no heat step -- A ladleful of soft vanilla ice cream combined with raw egg and never reheated does not reduce the hazard. If you want an egg-enriched drink of this kind, use a current recipe written around pasteurized egg product.
- Fountain vocabulary: syrups"Pineapple and vanilla syrups" are flavouring syrups, not preserving syrup or the juice from a can: heavy sugar solutions flavoured to strength.
- Fountain vocabulary: a ladlefulThe ice-cream ladle of the period is generally reckoned at around two ounces, i.e. roughly a quarter cup, not a modern scoop.
- Soda waterWater charged under pressure and drawn from a fountain stream; the recipe gives no quantity, so the drink is built up to the glass.
- YieldOne glass. The formula is written per serving.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of soda-fountain literature published as American temperance sentiment hardened toward national Prohibition; the title trades on the slang phrase "on the water wagon" for someone who has sworn off drink. Egg drinks were central to the fountain's pitch: an egg shaken into syrup and soda was sold as nourishment as much as refreshment, which is why fountain books of the 1900s and 1910s are thick with egg phosphates, egg lemonades and egg chocolates.