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The Syracuse
Shake well together one egg, two tablespoonfuls or a ladleful of vanilla ice cream, the same amount of pineapple water ice and two teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar. Serve in a tall glass, adding soda water and whipped cream.
A soda-fountain egg drink of the sort every druggist's manual carried before the First World War. The mechanics are simple, but the egg is the problem.
- The raw eggThe whole egg goes into the shaker uncooked and is never heated at any stage. A whole raw egg shaken into a cold drink carries a real risk of Salmonella, and the ice cream and iced soda water keep everything in the temperature range where bacteria persist. If you want an egg cream or egg soda today, work from a current recipe written around pasteurized eggs.
- Why fountains used it anywayEgg drinks appear routinely in fountain and druggist formularies of the period: the egg gave body and foam, and such drinks were often promoted as nourishing. That says more about period food safety expectations than about the safety of the drink.
- "Water ice"A water ice is a sorbet -- fruit juice or puree, sugar and water, frozen without dairy or egg. Pineapple water ice was a fountain staple; a plain pineapple sorbet is the modern equivalent.
- A ladlefulThe recipe treats a ladleful as interchangeable with two tablespoonfuls, so read it as roughly one fluid ounce.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain usage this means finely ground granulated sugar, chosen because it dissolves in a cold shaker. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, which will slightly cloud and thicken a drink.
- Soda waterFountain soda was drawn under pressure from a carbonator, and was directed into the glass in a coarse then fine stream to build the head. Bottled water may give a flatter result.
To be "on the water wagon" was American slang for having sworn off liquor, and volumes of soda-fountain formulas were published in the years before national Prohibition as the drugstore counter took over ground the saloon was losing. The formula itself is a standard fountain construction: an egg for body, ice cream for richness, a fruit water ice for acidity, and carbonated water added last to lift the whole thing into foam. Egg drinks of this kind were sometimes sold as restoratives, part of the pharmacy's habit of selling refreshment and medicine across the same counter.