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Victory Shake
Mix one tablespoonful each of pineapple, lemon, and orange syrups, add one egg and four tablespoonfuls of plain cream. Shake, and strain into a glass one fourth full of cracked ice. Fill up with soda water, using the syphon.
A soda-fountain formula from the era when drug-store syphons stood on every counter. The mixing is straightforward; the raw egg is the problem.
- Why this one fails todayThe whole egg goes into the shaker raw and is never heated at any point. Salmonella in the shell egg is the specific risk, and a cold acidic soda does nothing to reduce it. Use a current recipe if you want an egg drink.
- The syrupsFountain syrups of the period were simple syrup cooked with fruit juice or extract, generally heavier than modern bottled cordials; period manuals often specify something on the order of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water. Modern bottled fruit syrups may read sweeter or thinner than what these tablespoon measures assumed.
- "Plain cream"Fountain terminology for unwhipped, unsweetened cream, lighter than the heavy whipping cream sold in most supermarkets and closest to today's light cream or half-and-half.
- The syphonA soda syphon charged with CO2, not bottled club soda. The point is a hard jet of gas under pressure, which is what lifted the egg and cream into a foam as the glass filled.
- YieldOne fountain glass; the recipe does not state a size.
Soda-fountain manuals multiplied in the United States in the 1910s, as state dry laws spread and national Prohibition approached. "Victory" was attached to almost everything during and just after the First World War, from gardens to loaves to bonds, and a fountain drink named for the moment was ordinary commercial patriotism. The egg-and-cream shake belongs to an older fountain family, the flips and egg phosphates, which were sold as nourishing rather than merely refreshing, an idea that made sense when the drug store dispensed both soda and medicine from the same counter.