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The Wellesley
Mix four tablespoonfuls of raspberry syrup, one tablespoonful of orange syrup, and one egg. Shake, and strain into a glass one half full of cracked ice. Add soda water and a little grated nutmeg.
A soda-fountain egg drink of the sort every 1910s dispenser knew by heart. The mechanics are simple; the raw egg is the problem, and it is not one that a change of timing or temperature fixes.
- The raw eggA whole shell egg is shaken cold, strained, and served without ever being heated. Modern guidance treats unpasteurized shell eggs as a Salmonella risk precisely in uncooked applications like this one, and shaking with ice does nothing to reduce it. If you want an egg soda, use a current recipe written around pasteurized egg product.
- "Soda water"At a fountain this meant carbonated water drawn under pressure from a syphon or draught arm, generally more sharply carbonated than bottled club soda; the force of the stream also helped mix the drink.
- The syrupsRaspberry and orange syrup here are fountain syrups: heavy sugar-and-water bases flavored with fruit juice or extract, thicker and sweeter than the thin cordials or the corn-syrup products sold under similar names now.
- ProportionsFive tablespoons of syrup in all, four raspberry to one orange: a little over a quarter cup of sweet syrup in a single glass, very sweet by current taste.
- Cracked iceNot cubes; ice broken small, which chills faster in the shaker and packs more tightly in the serving glass. The recipe's "one half full" assumes that finer grade.
- YieldOne glass; the recipe does not specify a size, and fountain glassware varied.
- The nutmegGrated nutmeg was a common finish on egg drinks of this period.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the temperance-era literature of nonalcoholic drinks, when a whole repertoire of mixed drinks was being built that answered the saloon without the alcohol. Egg drinks in particular were sold as nourishment rather than indulgence, on the widely held view that a raw egg beaten into a cold sweet drink was strengthening for invalids, students and anyone thought to be run down. That belief, not flavor, is why an egg turns up in a raspberry soda at all, and it is the one part of the recipe that has not survived.