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Cupid's Idea
One whole egg, 1 ounce champagne syrup, ½ ounce Catawba syrup, 1 dash lactart, ½ tumblerful cracked ice. Shake well and fill with plain soda, both fine and coarse stream. Pour from tumbler to shaker and strain and serve with grated nutmeg.
A fountain egg drink of the 1890s, shaken and served cold. The vocabulary needs translating, but the central problem is the egg, which is never heated at any point.
- Raw egg, never cookedThe whole egg goes into the shaker with ice and carbonated water and is served immediately. Nothing in the process approaches the 160F needed to inactivate Salmonella, and the acid from the lactart and syrups does not pasteurise anything. A current recipe using pasteurised eggs should be consulted instead.
- LactartA proprietary dilute lactic acid solution sold to soda fountains as a souring agent, roughly the tartness of lemon juice without the flavour. It has not been on the market for a century.
- Champagne syrupNot wine. Fountain "champagne" syrup was a flavouring compound, typically sugar syrup with an acid (citric or tartaric) and essential oils, meant to suggest sparkling wine in an alcohol-free drink.
- Catawba syrupMade from the Catawba grape, a native American slip-skin variety with the musky, foxy character familiar from Concord grape juice. Modern Concord syrup is the nearest thing in flavour.
- Tumbler and ouncesFountain tumblers of this era ran to roughly 8 to 12 fluid ounces, so half a tumblerful of cracked ice is on the order of half a cup to three-quarters of a cup. The syrup ounces are fluid ounces from a graduated pump or measure.
- Fine and coarse streamFountain taps offered two draws: a coarse stream of heavily charged water for volume and agitation, and a fine spray for a softer finish. A single soda siphon gives one texture only.
- Pour from tumbler to shakerThe transfer from one vessel to the other was how a fountain man built foam on an egg drink without a mechanical mixer.
Egg drinks were a staple of the American soda fountain from the 1870s onward, sold as much for nourishment as for refreshment: an egg shaken into soda water was considered a light meal for invalids and clerks alike, and druggists who ran the fountains were happy to blur the line between confection and tonic. The coy names were part of the trade, and books of this kind ran through dozens of them. The grated nutmeg here is often traced to the older tavern flip and egg nogg, where it is traditionally said to have masked the raw egg's sulphury note; the Catawba syrup points to the once-substantial Ohio and Finger Lakes grape industry, whose fruit reached far more people as juice and syrup than as wine.