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Egg Orange
One to ½ ounces orange syrup, 1 egg, ½ ounce cream, hot water enough to fill an 8-ounce mug. Mix the syrup, egg and cream together in an egg shaker, shake as in making cold egg drinks, add the hot water, and mix all by pouring back and forth several times from shaker to mug. Or, prepare by beating the egg with a spoon, add the syrup and cream, mix all quickly with the spoon, add the hot water, stirring constantly meanwhile, and strain.
This is a hot fountain drink built on an uncooked egg, and that is where it fails. The notes below explain the specific problem and decode the fountain vocabulary.
- The egg is never cookedWater hot enough to draw from a fountain urn sits around 190-200F, but once it is poured over an ounce of cold syrup, a half ounce of cream and a whole shell egg in a cold mug, the mixture lands well below the 160F needed to kill Salmonella in egg. There is also no holding time at all: the drink is poured back and forth and handed over.
- Salmonella EnteritidisThe pathogen most associated with intact shell eggs was not recognised in the egg supply until the 1980s, decades after this book. It can be present inside an apparently clean, uncracked egg, so no amount of washing the shell addresses it. If you want a hot egg beverage, use a current recipe that either cooks the custard to temperature or specifies pasteurised eggs.
- Straining does nothingThe second method's instruction to strain removes chalazae and unbroken bits of white. It is a texture step, not a safety step, and should not be read as one.
- Ounces are fluid ouncesThe measures here are by volume: syrup one to one and a half fluid ounces, cream half a fluid ounce, in an 8 fl oz mug. The recipe makes a single drink.
- Egg shakerA metal shaker kept at the fountain for egg drinks, used here as it would be for cold egg drinks. The recipe also gives a spoon method for anyone without one.
- Orange syrupA fountain orange syrup of the period was a heavy sugar syrup flavoured with orange oil and peel, much sweeter than modern orange juice or concentrate. It is not interchangeable with juice in a formula that relies on the syrup for both sweetness and body.
Egg drinks were a staple of the American soda fountain from the late nineteenth century into the 1930s, sold less as a treat than as a restorative: a whole egg was reckoned a meal in a glass for clerks and shoppers who wanted something quick and fortifying. The hot versions, of which this is one, filled the winter months when cold sodas sold badly, and fountain manuals of the era print long lists of them alongside hot chocolate, hot malted milk and beef tea. The dispenser's skill lay in emulsifying the egg with syrup and cream before the water went in, since an egg dropped straight into hot liquid strings and curdles. The whole genre faded as the fountains themselves gave way to packaged soft drinks, though egg drinks of other kinds, among them eggnog and the alcoholic flip, long outlasted it.