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The Monterey
Mix one tablespoonful of lemon syrup, one tablespoonful of raspberry syrup, two tablespoonfuls of orange syrup, and four tablespoonfuls of sweet cream. Add one egg and shake with a little cracked ice. Strain into a glass and add soda water.
A soda-fountain egg cream from the era when the drugstore counter was the respectable alternative to the saloon. The obstacle is the whole raw egg, which in this drink is never heated at any point.
- The raw eggThe egg is shaken cold with ice and syrup and served immediately, so nothing in the process approaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella. Raw shell eggs were routinely called for in fountain drinks of this period. Use a current recipe if you want a drink of this type.
- Cream, tooThe four tablespoonfuls of sweet cream may in this period have been raw or only lightly treated. Combined with an uncooked egg, the drink gets no step that would make either ingredient safe.
- What "syrup" means hereFountain syrups were heavy sugar solutions flavored with fruit juice or extract, much sweeter and thicker than fruit juice. A modern soda syrup may not be a like-for-like substitute in either sweetness or body.
- "Sweet cream"Not sweetened cream, but cream that has not soured — the period's way of distinguishing it from sour cream or buttermilk. It corresponds to today's light or heavy cream.
- "Soda water"Fountain soda water was charged under pressure and drawn hard into the glass, which would have helped work the egg and cream into a foam. Bottled club soda poured gently is likely to give a flatter result.
- ScaleThe eight tablespoonfuls of syrup and cream come to about four fluid ounces, a base to be topped up with soda in a fountain glass.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to a small genre of books published in the years around national Prohibition agitation, offering soft drinks, sodas and "temperance beverages" as a substitute for the bar — the title is a pun on the temperance idiom of climbing aboard the water wagon. Drinks like this one, built from bottled fruit syrups, cream, an egg and charged water, were the stock in trade of the American drugstore soda fountain, which by the 1910s had become a genuine commercial rival to the saloon. Egg drinks were one recognised fountain category among many: the egg gave body and a lasting head, and fountain manuals of the period treated such drinks as nourishing as well as refreshing, sometimes suggesting them to invalids. Naming individual combinations after places and hotels — "The Monterey" here — was ordinary fountain practice, a way of dressing up a handful of syrups as something worth ordering by name.