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Carbonated Cream
Powdered Sugar, 3½ lbs.; White of, 6 eggs.; White Glycerin, ½ lb.; Water, 1 gallon. Dissolve sugar in water, add glycerin, and mix well. Take eggs (white), beat with a "Keystone" or "Dover" beater, and add to the dissolved sugar. Then add to 5 gallons of water, and charge at 125 pounds' pressure. Draw syrup and carbonated cream in one glass, and put shaved or cracked ice in another glass. On the ice draw the carbonated water, and mix with the syrup and carbonated cream by pouring together. Do not draw syrup and carbonated cream in a glass and then turn on a fine or mixing soda stream, as sufficient water cannot by that means enter into the drink. Do not add the ice to the syrup and carbonated cream, for it will flaten the drink; but put in separate glasses as directed.
This is a soda-fountain preparation rather than a kitchen one: a foaming base held under pressure in a charged tank and drawn alongside syrup. Several things in it do not transfer to a modern counter, and one of them is a genuine hazard.
- Raw egg white, held under pressureSix raw whites are dispersed through six gallons of sugar water and kept in a charged tank at fountain temperature, drawn glass by glass over hours or days. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella, and the sweetened, low-acid liquid is a good growth medium. This is the reason the recipe cannot be made as written.
- No acid, no alcohol, no heatSome old egg drinks get a measure of protection from lemon juice or spirits. There is none here: sugar, water, glycerin and white. Carbonic acid from the charge lowers the pH only slightly and is not a preservative in any meaningful sense.
- "Cream" means foam, not dairy"Cream" here means foam, not dairy -- Nothing in this formula is dairy. In formulas of this type a "cream" was a body-and-head agent, the egg white giving the drink its lasting foam and a slick mouthfeel. Modern bar practice gets the same effect from pasteurised egg white or a plant foamer, and a current recipe should be used for it.
- White glycerinGlycerin, sold by druggists in "white" (purified) grade, was used at the fountain as a sweetener-extender and mouthfeel agent. Half a pound to six gallons is a small dose per glass, but glycerin is osmotically active and unpleasant in quantity.
- 125 pounds' pressureThat is tank-charging pressure for a commercial fountain of the period, not anything a home carbonator or siphon is built for. Domestic equipment works at a small fraction of that.
- Keystone and Dover beatersBoth were hand-cranked rotary egg beaters, Dover being the common American pattern. The instruction simply means whip the whites to a foam before they go into the syrup.
- The pouring techniqueThe point of the last three sentences is dilution and head: syrup and cream in one glass, ice and carbonated water in the other, then poured together. Drawing soda through a fine stream onto the syrup, or icing the syrup first, either underfills the drink or knocks the foam flat. It is sound fountain reasoning, whatever the base.
The American soda fountain of the 1890s and 1900s ran on a small library of trade formulas like this one, sold in books aimed at dispensers rather than housewives. In formulas of this sort, "cream" often meant not dairy but a foaming, body-building base, most often built on beaten egg white, that gave a plain syrup-and-soda drink the thick collar and clinging texture customers associated with an expensive counter. Egg white was a standard foamer of the era in both the soda shop and the bar, where it did the same work in fizzes and sours, and it is worth noting how much of the instruction here is about mechanics rather than flavour: which glass gets the ice, in what order things are poured, how much water actually ends up in the drink. A dispenser was judged on head and dilution, and the closing warnings are the voice of someone who had watched a lot of flat sodas go across the marble.