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Arion
One-half ounce apricot syrup, ½ ounce peach syrup, ½ ounce rose syrup, 2 ounces plain cream, 1 egg, 4 glass ice. Shake, strain, toss and serve.
A fountain egg shake of the sort a soda clerk turned out in under a minute. The measures and the equipment need translating, but the raw egg is the reason this one stays on the page rather than going in the shaker.
- Raw egg, never heatedThe whole egg goes in cold, is shaken with ice and cream, and is served immediately. Nothing in the sequence brings it near the temperature that would inactivate Salmonella, and the cream gives any organisms present a comfortable medium. Fountain practice assumed a fresh local egg and a fast turnover; neither is a control. Use a current recipe if you want an egg drink.
- "4 glass ice"A fountain measure of ice by the glass rather than four glasses of it; the exact fraction intended is unclear, and it may be a garbled ¼. Drinks of this kind were shaken in a steel cup fitted over a heavy mixing glass.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesThe three syrups total 1½ fl oz, roughly 3 tablespoons, against 2 fl oz of cream — a small drink by modern standards, about 5 oz before dilution, meant for a single fountain glass.
- Plain creamIn fountain usage this generally means unsweetened light or coffee cream, in the region of 18 to 20 percent fat, as distinct from whipped or sweetened cream. Modern light cream is the closest equivalent; half-and-half will be thinner.
- Rose syrupA rosewater-based simple syrup, not a berry syrup despite the colour. It was standard fountain stock in this period and survives in Middle Eastern and South Asian groceries; a little goes a long way and the half ounce here is doing real work against the two stone fruits.
- Apricot and peach syrupsFountain syrups of the era were sugar syrups flavoured with fruit extract or a crushed-fruit base. Their strength varied by house and by supplier, so a modern bottled syrup will not necessarily match this volume for volume.
- "Toss"After straining, the drink was poured back and forth between two glasses to raise the foam that the egg white provides. It is the finishing step, not a garnish, and the reason the drink was served at once.
Egg drinks were fountain staples rather than novelties: the whole egg gave body, foam and a nutritional claim at a time when the soda counter marketed itself partly as a health resort, and pharmacists dispensed egg phosphates and egg creams beside their tonics. The name is one of a large family of fountain drinks christened after clubs, societies and classical figures — Arion was the Greek poet said to have been carried ashore by a dolphin, and Arion singing societies were prominent in German-American cities through the later nineteenth century, so the borrowing could have come from either direction; formula books of this kind rarely explain their titles. What the recipe does show plainly is the fountain's house style: three floral and stone-fruit syrups shaken together, cream for weight, and speed as the only preservation.