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Egg Lemonade, Hot
One egg, juice of 1 lemon, 3 spoonfuls powdered sugar. Beat the egg with lemon juice and sugar thoroughly. Mix while adding the hot water. Serve grated nutmeg and cinnamon. Or, juice of ½ lemon, 1 egg, 2 teaspoonfuls sugar, hot water enough to fill an 8-ounce glass. Or, 1 egg, juice of ½ lemon, 1 ounce lemon syrup. Shake well, strain and add 1 cupful hot water. Stir with twist bar spoon and serve with nutmeg.
This is a raw-egg drink in all three variants, and nothing in the procedure brings the egg to a safe temperature. The notes below explain the failure and decode the fountain vocabulary.
- The egg is never cookedA whole shell egg is beaten raw into the glass and hot water is poured over it. Even water drawn near boiling drops sharply on contact with a cold glass, cold egg and cold lemon juice, and the mixture is served at once with no holding time, so the egg is effectively raw. Salmonella in shell eggs is the specific risk, and it is among the reasons drinks of this kind are no longer served.
- Fountain hot water was not boiling waterFountain hot water was typically drawn from a heated tank rather than a boiling kettle, and the recipe gives no temperature at all. Whatever it was, it cannot be relied on to make a raw egg safe. Use a current recipe if you want a hot lemon-and-egg drink.
- The third variant is worseThe third variant adds a step -- Shaking the egg with lemon juice and syrup, then straining, adds a delay before the hot water goes in and before service. The egg is warmed but never cooked.
- "Spoonfuls" hereThe recipe does not say what size spoon is meant. A small spoon rather than a tablespoon is the likelier reading, which would bring the three spoonfuls of the first variant within range of the second variant's two teaspoonfuls -- though the first also uses twice the lemon juice.
- Lemon syrupThe ounce of lemon syrup in the third version is fountain stock syrup: heavy sugar syrup flavoured with lemon oil and juice, not the thin cordial sold today. It is doing the work of both the sugar and part of the acid.
- Twist bar spoonThe long spiral-stemmed spoon of the marble counter. The twisted stem is usually said to help spin the spoon between the fingers while stirring, though this is trade lore rather than anything the recipe explains.
- YieldOne drink in each case. Only the second variant states a size, an 8-ounce glass; the first gives no water quantity and the third adds a cupful of hot water to the shaken mixture.
Hot egg lemonade belongs to the era when the soda fountain doubled as a dispensary. Drugstore fountains grew out of the pharmacy counter, and their manuals sat somewhere between a bartender's guide and a book of domestic remedies: egg drinks, beef tea, hot malted milk and phosphates were sold to the run-down and the head-cold alike, on the widely held Victorian view that a raw egg beaten into something warm was concentrated nourishment for an invalid. Lemon supplied acid and a reason to drink it; nutmeg and cinnamon, both long associated with warming and settling the stomach, finished the glass. The same logic produced the egg nog and the eggphosphate on neighbouring pages of fountain books, and the disappearance of the whole family of raw-egg counter drinks is often attributed to egg-handling rules and a better understanding of salmonellosis, though the decline of the soda fountain itself surely counted for as much.