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The Garden City
Add the white of one egg to three tablespoonfuls of cherry syrup, one tablespoonful of ginger syrup, and four tablespoonfuls of vanilla ice cream. Shake well, pour into a glass, and add a little nutmeg.
A soda-fountain shake of the Prohibition era, built on flavoring syrups rather than fruit. It comes together in a minute, but the proportions are small and the egg white does most of the work.
- The hinge: the egg whiteShake hard and long enough to get a real foam — a full 20 to 30 seconds. An underworked white leaves a slick, thin drink instead of the meringue-like head the recipe is after. Because the white is never cooked, use pasteurized egg white (about 1 fl oz from a carton) if you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young, or immune-compromised.
- What the syrups areCherry syrup and ginger syrup here mean fountain syrups: heavy sugar syrups flavored with cherry and with ginger, not fruit juice and not ginger ale. Bar-grade cherry syrup or the liquid from a jar of good maraschinos works; for ginger, a homemade syrup of equal sugar and water steeped with sliced fresh ginger is closer than most commercial ginger cordials, which are thinner.
- MeasurementsThree tablespoons cherry syrup is about 1.5 fl oz, one tablespoon ginger about 0.5 fl oz, and four tablespoons ice cream is a quarter cup — a small scoop. The liquid comes to roughly 5 fl oz, more once the white is whipped up: one modest glass. Doubling it is reasonable for a modern serving.
- Ice, or noneThe original does not mention ice, and the ice cream alone will not chill a shaker properly. Add two or three cubes and strain, or shake without ice and pour over a couple of cubes; skipping the chill entirely gives a lukewarm, cloying drink.
- Ice cream has changedFountain vanilla of this period was generally denser and less aerated than much of today's supermarket ice cream. A premium, low-overrun vanilla thickens the drink; cheap airy ice cream mostly disappears into the foam. Let it soften slightly before measuring.
- The nutmegGrate it over the poured drink, not into the shaker; the aroma is the point, and pre-ground nutmeg contributes little. A few passes on a microplane is enough.
- ServingUse a chilled 8 oz glass so the foam has room to stand. Drink it immediately; the white begins to separate from the syrup within a few minutes.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the last years before national Prohibition, when temperance societies and soda fountains alike were promoting non-alcoholic drinks as a respectable substitute for the bar — the "water wagon" of the title being a general idiom for abstaining, whose own origin is folk tradition. Drinks like this one can be read as cocktails with the liquor engineered out: the shaken egg white, the dash of nutmeg over the top, and the paired sweet-and-spicy syrups all recall the flip and the fizz, with vanilla ice cream standing in for the spirit's body. "The Garden City" was a nickname claimed by several American towns, Chicago most prominently; there is no evidence that the drink originated in any of them, and such names were generally chosen for appeal rather than provenance.