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The Plymouth
Break an egg into a shaker and add one tablespoonful of raspberry syrup, two tablespoonfuls of cream, and a dash of acid phosphate. Add cracked ice and shake briskly, then pour from shaker to glass several times and serve while foaming.
A soda-fountain egg drink of the temperance era, built in a shaker and served foaming. The obstacle is the egg, which is eaten raw.
- Why this one failsThe whole egg is shaken with cold cream and ice and drunk immediately. Nothing in the procedure brings it near a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and the acid phosphate is far too weak and too brief in contact to do anything about it. When this was written shell eggs came from a local supplier and the risk was accepted; it is not accepted now. If you want a fountain egg drink, work from a current recipe written around pasteurized eggs.
- Cream and ice, held coldCompounding the egg problem, this is a raw dairy-and-egg mixture served at fountain temperature with no cooking step at any point. There is no version of the written method that reaches a safe hold.
- Acid phosphateNot a flavouring but a souring agent: a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, potassium and magnesium salts, widely used behind soda counters for the tartness citrus juice would otherwise give. It is still made in small batches for cocktail and soda work. A "dash" is a few drops to a scant quarter teaspoon.
- Raspberry syrupFountain syrup, not preserve or coulis: sugar and water cooked with raspberry to a heavy pouring consistency. Modern bar-grade raspberry syrups are the same idea.
- "Pour from shaker to glass several times"The step that makes the drink. Working it back and forth aerates the egg white into a stable head, which is what "serve while foaming" refers to. It is a technique worth knowing even though this particular formula should not be made.
- ScaleOne egg, one tablespoon of syrup and two of cream is a single small fountain glass; the measured ingredients come to a little over three ounces before any ice melt and foam are counted.
Books like this one belong to the last stretch of the American soda fountain's golden age, when druggists and lunch counters competed to prove that a drink could be elaborate without being alcoholic — a commercial argument that grew louder through the 1910s as national prohibition approached. Egg drinks were a staple of that trade: the egg gave body and foam where spirits and bitters could not be used, and the family of fountain formulas built on it runs from plain egg lemonades through egg phosphates to the various "nogs." Acid phosphate, which appears here and in domestic collections alike, was a bulk pharmacy item, sold to counters by the gallon, and its near-disappearance after mid-century is why these drinks read so oddly today.