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The Sagamore
Beat the white and the yolk of one egg separately and mix with two tablespoonfuls of chocolate syrup. Shake with a small amount of ice and add soda water.
This is a soda-fountain egg chocolate, and the whole drink is built on a raw egg that never sees heat, acid or alcohol. That is the problem, and it is not one that a change in timing or temperature fixes.
- The raw egg is the whole issueBoth white and yolk go into the glass uncooked and are served immediately. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella internally, not merely on the shell, and nothing in this formula — chocolate syrup, ice, carbonated water — inactivates it.
- No acid, no alcohol, no holding timeSome historic egg drinks include a strong acid or a spirit and a period of refrigeration, which can reduce bacterial load though not reliably eliminate it. This one has neither, so nothing of the sort is at work here.
- Ice is not a controlShaking with ice chills the drink but does not kill anything; cold only slows growth. The drink is also served at once, so even that does nothing useful.
- Who is most at riskChildren, older drinkers, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised are least able to tolerate this risk, and fountain egg drinks were commonly advertised as nourishing tonics.
- If you want an egg chocolateUse a current recipe written for the ingredients sold today rather than adapting this one.
- Reading the original"Soda water" here means plain carbonated water, not a sweetened soft drink, and "chocolate syrup" means a thick sweet chocolate syrup of the period. The recipe makes a single glass.
Egg drinks were a staple of the American soda fountain from the late nineteenth century onward, sold less as a treat than as a restorative — the egg was the selling point, advertised as strength in a glass for invalids, clerks and children. On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the wave of non-alcoholic drink books published around the arrival of national Prohibition, when soda fountains expanded to fill the space bars had occupied and needed a repertoire substantial enough to stand in for mixed drinks. An egg beaten in two parts, shaken with syrup and lengthened with soda, was the answer to a flip: rich, foamy, faintly ceremonial — and, in a book like this one, made at home rather than over a counter. The habit persisted in egg malts long after, though whether egg creams ever contained egg at all is disputed; they are widely held never to have.