Home › Fruit Drinks and Cider › Washington Phosphate
Washington Phosphate
Break an egg into a shaker, add three tablespoonfuls of cherry syrup and one teaspoonful of acid phosphate. Add cracked ice and enough soda water to fill a glass. Shake well and pour into a tall glass. A grating of nutmeg may be added.
A soda-fountain egg drink from the temperance era. The technique is sound bar work, but the central ingredient is a raw shell egg that is never heated at any point, and that is why this one stays on the page rather than going in the shaker.
- The raw egg is the problemThe whole egg goes into the shaker uncooked and is served immediately over ice. Nothing in the drink reaches a temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, and the acid phosphate and soda water do not pasteurise anything. Shell eggs from a modern retail supply are not safe to consume raw.
- Cold and acid are not controlsChilling slows bacterial growth but kills nothing, and the pH of a phosphate-and-soda drink is nowhere near low enough or held long enough to matter. If you want a drink of this style, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg product.
- Acid phosphate, for contextA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to druggists by the gallon and used at the fountain to give a sharp, dry bite without the fruitiness of citrus. It is still manufactured for cocktail and soda work, so the ingredient itself is not the obstacle here.
- Cherry syrupFountain syrup of the period was a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with cherry, closer to modern soda syrup than to a preserving syrup or a maraschino liqueur. Three tablespoons is a sweet drink by current standards.
- Soda waterDrawn from a pressurised fountain, generally more highly carbonated than bottled sparkling water. The original directs that the soda be shaken along with everything else, which would drive off much of the gas; common later bar practice is to shake the egg and syrup first and top with soda afterwards.
- YieldOne tall glass; the recipe gives no measure, and period fountain glasses of this type generally ran somewhere in the 8 to 12 ounce range.
Books like this one answered a practical question: what does a counter serve when it is not serving liquor. The answer, largely, was the soda fountain, which had developed a full professional repertoire of phosphates, egg drinks, lemonades and ciders, and druggists who could work a marble counter as fluently as any bartender. "Phosphate" here means acid phosphate, the fountain's standard souring agent, and a drink with an egg shaken into it was sold as much for nourishment as for refreshment, in the same spirit as an egg cream or a milk punch. A Washington Phosphate is a naming convention rather than any documented connection to the man or the city.