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Coffee Bouquet
Strawberry syrup, ¾ ounce, vanilla syrup, ¾ ounce, sweet cream, 1 ounce, cream. I fresh egg. Shake well and fill mug with hot coffee; cover with whipped ounce, Coffee Frappe. Two ounces coffee syrup, 3 ounces plain cream, a good-sized teaspoonful glass. of ice cream; shake well with ice; use only fine stream and serve in bell ice; use only fine stream and serve in bell glass.
A hot fountain drink from the era when the soda clerk worked with a shaker, a syrup rail and a hot-coffee urn. The proportions are legible enough to follow, but the egg makes this one to read rather than to build.
- The raw egg is the problemA whole fresh egg is shaken cold with syrup and cream, then hot coffee is poured over it. Pouring hot coffee onto a cold shaken mixture does not reliably bring the egg to a safe temperature or hold it there: the cold cream and syrup pull the mug temperature down on contact and there is no holding time at all. The egg is served essentially raw, which is why this belongs in the reading pile; if you want a hot coffee-and-cream drink, use a current recipe.
- Fountain ouncesThe measures here are fluid ounces. Three-quarters of an ounce is a tablespoon and a half; the measured syrup and cream come to about 2 1/2 ounces of base, plus the egg, before the coffee goes in.
- Sweet creamIn fountain usage "sweet cream" simply means fresh unsoured cream, as opposed to the sour cream or condensed milk also kept behind the counter. It would have been closer to a modern light cream than to heavy cream.
- Fountain syrupsStrawberry and vanilla syrups at the fountain were heavy sugar syrups, thicker and sweeter than a thin flavouring syrup. A modern substitute may not give the same body.
- The mugThe recipe calls for a mug rather than a glass; hot fountain drinks were generally served in china, which holds the heat.
- YieldOne drink; the finished volume depends on the size of the mug, since the coffee simply fills it.
Soda fountains ran hot as well as cold, and by the early twentieth century a well-equipped counter carried a coffee urn and a hot-water bath for beef tea, malted milk and clam bouillon alongside the ice cream. Raw egg was ordinary fountain stock in that world: egg phosphates, egg lemonades and egg chocolates were all standard, and the egg was sold as nourishment rather than indulgence, aimed at customers thought to need building up. "Bouquet" in fountain naming generally signals a blend of two or more flavouring syrups rather than any single dominant one, here strawberry and vanilla married under coffee and whipped cream.