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Egg-Nog (One ounce cognac syrup ounce)
One ounce cognac syrup, ½ ounce Jamaica ginger, small quantities of cracked ice and powdered sugar, 1 whole egg. Shake well and add enough sweet milk to fill tumbler. Shake well again and serve with a little nutmeg.
A soda-fountain egg-nog, built in a shaker rather than a punch bowl and served by the glass. Two of its four flavourings are pharmacy goods rather than kitchen ones, and the drink is finished raw.
- Why the cautionA whole raw egg is shaken into cold milk and served immediately, with nothing in the glass that would kill Salmonella and no cooking step at any point. A fountain of this period cracked eggs to order and accepted the risk; there is no reason to. If you want a drink of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurised shell eggs or pasteurised liquid egg.
- Jamaica gingerMost likely not a syrup or a liqueur but fluid extract of ginger, a high-proof pharmacy preparation carrying a heavy dose of ginger resin. Half an ounce is a great deal of it by pharmacy standards, and it is probably why this drink tastes hot rather than merely spiced. It is not generally sold as a beverage ingredient today.
- "Cognac syrup"A fountain flavouring syrup, generally sugar syrup carrying a brandy-type essence rather than brandy itself. Much of what a fountain dispensed was alcohol-free, and such syrups gave the taste of a bar drink to a glass sold at a drug store counter.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from buttermilk or soured milk, which were both ordinary household stock at the time. No modern substitution is needed; the word simply meant unsoured.
- The tumblerFountain tumblers of the era varied, commonly somewhere between about 8 and 12 ounces, so the milk is doing most of the work once the syrup, egg and ice are in. The recipe is a single serving.
- The two shakesThe recipe shakes, adds milk, then shakes well again. A plausible reason is that egg and syrup combine more readily with little liquid in the shaker, with the milk added afterwards, though the recipe gives no reason of its own.
Egg-nog descends from the English posset and sack-possets of the seventeenth century — eggs, milk or cream and a fortified wine or ale — and crossed the Atlantic to become a fixture of American winter hospitality, where rum, whisky and brandy stood in for sack. The origin of "nog" is generally traced to an East Anglian word for a strong ale, though this is traditional rather than documented. What makes this version a period piece is where it appears: at a soda fountain, in a book for fountain operators, with the spirits replaced by a brandy-flavoured syrup and a slug of pharmacy ginger extract. The American drug store counter spent the temperance decades reproducing the bar's whole repertoire in flavoured syrup, and Jamaica ginger, sold as a stomach remedy, was the closest thing to a legitimate kick on the shelf — a role that ended badly in the Prohibition years, when adulterated ginger extract crippled thousands of drinkers.