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Egg Bracer, Hot
One teaspoonful powdered sugar, 1 teaspoonful brandy, 1 teaspoonful Jamaica rum, yolk of 1 egg shake well and add hot milk sprinkle nutmeg. yolk of 1 egg; shake well and add hot milk; sprinkle nutmeg.
This is a soda-fountain egg flip: a raw yolk beaten with spirits and sugar, then loosened with hot milk. The problem is the yolk, which never reaches a temperature that would make it safe.
- The yolk is never cookedPouring hot milk into a shaker of raw yolk drops the milk's temperature immediately and heats the egg unevenly. Egg proteins need to be held at temperature — roughly 140F for several minutes — for pathogen reduction, and a splash of hot milk into a cold cup does not achieve that anywhere in the drink.
- Salmonella risk sits in the yolkSalmonella Enteritidis can be present inside an intact shell egg, so a clean, uncracked egg is no assurance. The specific risk from the interior of shell eggs was not understood in the fountain era, and storage of eggs was far less consistently cold than now.
- The alcohol does nothingTwo teaspoons of brandy and rum in a cup of milk works out at only one or two percent alcohol by volume. That is far below any level that would inhibit bacterial growth, and nothing like the heavy spirit load in a long-aged batched eggnog.
- Heating it further will not fix itHeating it further is awkward -- holding a lone yolk in milk at a safe temperature without tipping it over into curds needs a thermometer and close attention, which the shake-and-serve method does not allow for. If you want a drink of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurized eggs or a cooked custard base.
- What "bracer" meant hereThe name is fountain shorthand for a restorative pick-me-up sold across the counter, not a cocktail.
- The doubled sentenceThe last clause repeats — "yolk of 1 egg; shake well and add hot milk; sprinkle nutmeg" — a duplication in the text rather than a second egg. It is one yolk.
American soda fountains of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sold far more than sweet drinks; the clerk's manual ran from phosphates and ice-cream sodas through to medicinal draughts, beef tea, and egg drinks marketed as nourishment for the run-down. Egg flips, nogs and "bracers" descend from a much older tavern tradition of hot spirituous milk and beer posset drinks, and the fountain moved them behind a marble counter, often with little or no liquor. Raw egg was treated as a strengthening food into the twentieth century it appears in fountain books, invalid cookery and gymnasium diets alike and grated nutmeg over hot milk was a common finish for drinks of this kind, plausibly a continuation of the older tradition of possets and syllabubs.