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Cherry Bounce (Syrup ounces Cracked Ice glass)
Cherry Syrup, 1 ½ ounces; Cracked Ice, ⅓ glass; Egg, 1; Brandy, 1 teaspoonful. Shake and add small stream soda. Serve like egg phosphate.
A fountain egg drink from the era when the soda jerk broke a whole raw egg into the shaker. The reason it cannot be reproduced as printed is the egg, not the brandy.
- The raw egg never reaches a safe temperatureThe whole egg goes into the shaker with syrup, ice and carbonated water and is served immediately. Nothing in the process kills Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact, clean-looking shell. The teaspoonful of brandy is far too little alcohol to have any antimicrobial effect. If you want a drink of this type, use a current recipe built on pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg.
- Fountain eggs were not stored as we store eggsEggs at a period fountain counter were unlikely to be held under modern refrigeration. Modern refrigeration reduces but does not eliminate the risk, which is why raw-egg beverages are still advised against for children, older adults, pregnant women and anyone immunocompromised.
- "Serve like egg phosphate"An egg phosphate was a familiar fountain drink: syrup, a whole egg and a few drops of acid phosphate, shaken with cracked ice and drawn up with soda; some house versions finished it with grated nutmeg. The instruction is shorthand for a method the clerk was expected to know already.
- Glass and measuresFountain glasses of the period varied in size, so "⅓ glass" of cracked ice is only approximate -- a few ounces by volume. Cherry syrup at 1½ ounces is a typical single-flavor charge; fountain syrups were generally heavier in sugar than most bottled syrups sold today.
- "Small stream"Fountain taps had a coarse stream and a fine stream. The fine stream was used on anything containing egg or cream, because a hard draw curdles and foams the mixture over the rim. It is a texture instruction, not a quantity.
- The nameCherry bounce properly means a cherry-and-spirits cordial. Here the name is borrowed for a soft-drink counter version, with the teaspoonful of brandy standing in for a whole bottle of the original.
Soda fountains sold themselves as places of refreshment and mild medicine, and the egg drink was their most substantial offering: for a few coins a clerk could hand across something closer to a light meal than a beverage, marketed to clerks, shoppers and convalescents as nourishing. Egg phosphates and egg lemonades worked from the same shaker technique, with the flavored syrup deciding the name. The teaspoon of brandy is characteristic of the trade around the turn of the twentieth century, when druggists' formula books like this one sat squarely between the bar manual and the pharmacopoeia. Borrowing the name of cherry bounce, a long-established American cherry cordial usually steeped in brandy or whiskey, let the fountain sell the association without the drink.