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Egg Drinks
To make them properly, more care and attention should be given to the mixing of egg drinks than any other kind. It pays to give them a good deal of attention, for the profit in an egg drink is a consideration, when five cents extra can be asked for the addition of an egg in a phosphate or other drink, such as egg chocolate or egg coffee. Both these are palatable beverages and good bracers. Customers are more critical about egg drinks than any other kind. To be good, they must be properly made. In making an egg drink, always break the egg into the glass first, so that the customer If your fountain is small, serve the well-known popular flavors. Do not attempt to introduce new drinks. can see it. An egg may be cracked neatly by holding it in the right hand between the thumb and forefinger, and striking it once on the edge of the glass which is held in the left hand. Immediately place the egg over the glass and gently press the thumb and finger together, which will divide the shell, and the egg will drop out. The yolk may be kept from breaking by letting the egg drop on the side of the glass. Do not break the egg into the shaker. Let the customer see the fresh egg, to give him confidence, and cause expectation of a good drink. Add the syrup and other ingredients, and two or three small pieces of ice to break up the egg thoroughly while shaking. The use of separate shaker and strainer is recommended for convenience, the common style of shaker which fits over the glass. Set the glass on the counter, and, holding the shaker firmly in the right hand, place it over the glass, picking up the latter with the left hand. Shake from side to side quickly and vigorously. Leave the mixture in the shaker and draw the soda using both the coarse and fine stream. Then pour into the glass, holding the shaker close to it, which leaves a fine foam on top. A slight sprinkling of finely ground nutmeg or cinnamon may be added as a top dressing , if desired. When lemon flavor is used, the rind of a piece of lemon should be twisted over the top, to add a nice fresh lemon flavor. The drinks will pour nicer, and have a finer foam at last, if the strainer is used. This will also take out any small pieces of ice which may not have melted. In making egg lemonades and milk drinks, where ice is used, it may be left in the drink if desired, in which case serve with straws. N. B. All drinks containing egg, if not strained, should be served with straws.
This is a fountain dispenser's method rather than a fixed formula, and its central instruction — a raw shell egg cracked into the customer's glass and shaken with syrup and soda — is the reason it cannot be followed today.
- Raw egg, never heatedThe egg is broken into the glass and served cold; nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella Enteritidis, which can be present inside an intact, clean, fresh-looking egg. Shaking with ice does nothing to the pathogen load.
- The shell on the rimThe showmanship here works against the drink. Striking the shell on the edge of the serving glass, then opening it directly over that glass, deliberately puts shell exterior in contact with the vessel the customer drinks from — the classic route for surface contamination to end up in the beverage.
- Held in the shakerThe mixture is left standing in the shaker while the soda is drawn, then poured out. Even briefly, the raw egg is held at counter temperature in a sugary medium with no time-and-temperature control at any stage.
- Served to whoever asksFountain trade meant serving children, the elderly and the ill — egg drinks were sold as "bracers" precisely to people who felt run down. These are the groups for whom raw egg carries the highest risk of severe illness.
- Use a current recipeIf you want a fountain-style egg drink, work from a modern recipe built around pasteurized shell eggs or pasteurized liquid egg. Do not adapt the timings or handling above.
- Vocabulary, for readingA phosphate is a fountain drink acidulated with dilute phosphoric acid solution, not a mineral supplement. The coarse and fine stream are the two taps of a soda draft arm — the coarse for volume, the fine spray for foam. The shaker described is the tumbler-and-cap type that seats over the serving glass, not a modern cocktail shaker.
Egg drinks belonged to the golden age of the American drugstore fountain, roughly the 1880s through the 1920s, when the dispenser was a trained tradesman with his own manuals and trade press. The economics stated here are the whole point of the entry: an egg added five cents to the price of a drink, so egg chocolate, egg coffee and egg lemonade carried a healthy margin. They were sold as nourishment as much as refreshment, in an era when a raw egg beaten into milk or wine was standard invalid cookery and the fountain sat inside a pharmacy. The theatrical one-handed crack in full view of the customer is a reminder that the fountain was a performance counter as well as a kitchen, and that visible freshness was the only guarantee of quality anyone could offer. The stray line about small fountains sticking to popular flavors reads as though it may have wandered in from a neighboring paragraph, a common hazard in these densely set trade books.