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Cider Egg-Nog
Shaved Ice, ¼ tumblerful; Sweet Cider, 6 ounces; Vanilla Syrup, 2 ounces. Egg Shake well, strain through a julep strainer into a 12-ounce tumbler, and serve with straws.
This is a fountain drink built on two raw ingredients that were treated very differently in 1900 than they are now. The problems are with the egg and with the cider, and neither can be resolved by adjusting the method.
- The raw egg is the main hazardA whole shell egg is broken into the shaker and served without heat of any kind. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella internally, not merely on the shell, and nothing in this drink — a few ounces of mild cider and sugar syrup — inactivates it. There is no alcohol here either, unlike a spirituous egg-nog.
- "Sweet cider" means unpasteurized"Sweet cider" means unfermented -- In fountain usage, sweet cider was fresh unfermented apple juice, often pressed locally, and in 1900 would almost certainly have been unpasteurized. Untreated apple cider is a documented vehicle for E. coli O157:H7 and Cryptosporidium; this is why untreated cider sold in the United States now carries a warning label, most cider being pasteurized instead.
- Cold service compounds itCold service does not fix it -- Shaved ice keeps the drink cold but kills nothing; chilling only slows bacterial growth, and any pathogen present in the egg or cider is still there when the drink is sipped.
- Who is most at riskYoung children, older adults, pregnant people and anyone immunocompromised are the groups for whom raw egg and untreated cider are specifically advised against. Fountain drinks like this were sold freely to all of them.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe written around pasteurized shell eggs or refrigerated pasteurized egg product and pasteurized cider. Do not adapt the proportions above and assume the result is safe.
- Reading the original measuresThe recipe gives the ice as "¼ tumblerful" without saying which glass is meant; the 12-ounce tumbler named at the end is the serving glass, and fountain tumbler sizes varied. A julep strainer is the perforated spoon-shaped strainer that sits in the mouth of the shaker tin, holding back the ice.
The American soda fountain of the 1890s and 1900s ran a parallel bar: the same shakers, strainers and showmanship as a saloon, minus the liquor. Egg drinks were its stock in trade — egg phosphates, egg lemonades and a whole family of "egg-nogs" that borrowed the name from the spirituous Christmas drink but relied on syrup and dairy or juice for body. Sweet cider was a seasonal fountain flavor in apple country, cheap in autumn and marketed as wholesome, and pairing it with an egg gave the dispenser a drink that could be sold as nourishment rather than mere refreshment; fountains of the period frequently advertised egg drinks to invalids and to men who had missed a meal. That marketing rested on an idea of the raw egg as a concentrated food, an assumption that survived well into the twentieth century and long outlasted the evidence for it.