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Cuban Punch
One ounce rum syrup, 1 ounce brandy syrup, 1 dash angostura bitters, 1 egg. Fill glass with pure milk and shaved ice, shake well and strain in fancy tall glass. Serve straws and top off with nutmeg.
A fountain drink of the egg-shake family, built cold and served straight from the shaker. The problem is the egg, which never sees heat at any stage.
- Raw egg, never heatedThe whole egg goes into the shaker with cold milk and ice and is strained into the glass. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella, which can be present inside an intact, clean shell. Fountain practice of the period assumed same-day eggs and a fast turnover; neither is a control. If you want a drink of this type, use a current recipe written around pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg.
- Milk assumptions"Pure milk" here most likely means plain unflavoured milk straight from the counter's supply; the recipe says nothing about whether it was pasteurized. Combined with a raw egg and no heat step, the drink was only ever as safe as the dairy supply behind the counter.
- Rum syrup and brandy syrupThese are most likely fountain flavouring syrups rather than spirits: sugar syrups carrying rum or brandy flavouring, of the same family as vanilla and sarsaparilla syrup. If so, the drink is named for a punch without being an alcoholic one, though the recipe itself does not spell this out.
- Angostura at the fountainA dash of bitters turns up in fountain work as well as bar work, and it is the one high-proof component here, in a quantity of a few drops. It is there for the aromatic bite against the sweet syrups.
- Proportions and yieldTwo ounces of syrup plus milk to fill makes a single drink; the recipe specifies only a "fancy tall glass" and gives no capacity. Shaved ice, not cubes, is called for.
- NutmegGrated over the top at the finish, as on egg nog and milk punch. It is a common finish for egg-and-milk drinks and points to the family this one belongs to.
The American soda fountain took much of its vocabulary from the bar: punches, flips, fizzes and nogs all reappear behind the marble counter, with flavouring syrups standing in for spirits. "Cuban" here presumably points at the rum syrup, though the drink itself looks like a fountain construction rather than anything Cuban. Egg drinks were a fixture of the trade and were sold partly as refreshment and partly as nourishment, the fountain having grown up alongside the drugstore and inherited some of its claims. Formulas of this kind read today as historical documents rather than working recipes, raw egg and possibly unpasteurized milk being what they are.