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Egg Lemonade
Shaved Ice, ½ tumblerful; Fresh Egg, 1.
Juice of 1 large lemon.
Powdered Sugar, 3 heaping teaspoonfuls; Spring Water, 6 ounces. Shake thoroughly. Draw small quantity of soda water, fine stream only, and grate a little nutmeg on top.
A soda-fountain egg drink from the era when a raw egg cracked into a shaker was considered a tonic. The mixing is trivial; the egg is the problem.
- Why this fails todayThe whole egg goes in raw and is never heated at any point — the drink is shaken with ice and topped with cold soda water. Salmonella on or in a shell egg is not addressed by acid from a lemon or by dilution, and the finished glass sits at fountain temperature while it is drunk. Use a current recipe if you want an egg drink; commercially pasteurised shell eggs or pasteurised liquid egg exist precisely for uncooked preparations.
- Who is most at riskEven setting aside general risk, drinks built on unpasteurised raw egg are specifically inadvisable for children, pregnant women, older adults and anyone immunocompromised. Manuals of the period tended to commend egg drinks to invalids and the convalescent as a strengthening food, which runs opposite to current advice.
- The units, for reading purposesFountain tumblers of the period varied, but commonly ran somewhere around 8 to 10 ounces, which would put half a tumblerful of shaved ice at roughly half a cup. "Spring water, 6 ounces" is plain still water by volume; the soda water is carbonated and added last.
- "Fine stream only"Fountain taps offered a coarse and a fine stream, and the fine stream was the one called for on drinks containing egg or cream, a hard jet of carbonated water being liable to froth them up unpleasantly — the one piece of craft in the instruction.
- Powdered sugarIn this period powdered sugar generally meant finely ground sugar for quick dissolving, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold under that name now. Fountains also used bar syrup for the same purpose.
Egg drinks were a fixture of the American soda fountain from the 1870s through the early twentieth century, sitting on the menu somewhere between refreshment and medicine. The dispenser's trade was closely tied to the drugstore, and manuals of this kind list egg lemonades, egg phosphates and eggnogs alongside tonics and bitters, often with notes on their supposed value for invalids and the convalescent — a raw egg being widely regarded as concentrated nourishment that a weak stomach could take. The nutmeg grated over the top is inherited directly from eggnog and milk punch, where it was long a traditional garnish. Pasteurisation of shell eggs and modern understanding of Salmonella transmission through intact eggs both came much later, which is why a drink that once read as wholesome now reads as a hazard.