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Egg Orangeade, Hot
One egg, juice of ½ orange, 2 teaspoonfuls powdered sugar. Shake well, strain and add 1 cupful hot soda. Stir and serve with nutmeg.
This is a hot soda-fountain egg drink, and the whole method turns on a piece of equipment no home kitchen has. Read the points below before deciding what to do with it.
- The raw egg is the problemA whole egg is shaken with juice and sugar, strained, then met with one cup of hot soda water and served immediately. A cup of hot liquid poured over a beaten egg does not hold the egg anywhere near 160F for long enough to matter; the drink reaches the drinker as raw egg in warm water. Salmonella risk in shell eggs is the reason modern eggnog and flip recipes either cook a custard base or specify pasteurized eggs.
- "Hot soda" is not carbonatedAt a period fountain, hot soda came from a separate hot-water tap or urn, often flavored mineral or plain water held near boiling; carbonation will not survive heat. The word "soda" here means the fountain, not fizz.
- Powdered sugarIn fountain manuals of this era powdered sugar means finely ground granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. The fine grind dissolves quickly in a shaken drink.
- The strain stepStraining after shaking would catch the chalazae and any unincorporated white, so the finished glass poured smooth. Whatever the reason, it is a texture measure only and does nothing to the food-safety question.
- YieldOne glass, roughly 11 to 12 ounces once the egg, the juice of half an orange and the cupful of hot water are combined. The nutmeg is grated over the top at the moment of service.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe built on pasteurized eggs or a cooked base rather than adapting this one.
Soda fountains of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did a serious winter trade in hot drinks, and the hot-soda counter was pitched as much at health as at pleasure: hot beef tea, hot malted milk, hot lemonade, and egg drinks like this one were sold to people who came in feeling poorly as often as to people who came in thirsty. The egg was the point. Before it acquired its modern reputation as a hazard, a raw egg beaten into a glass was widely regarded as concentrated nourishment for invalids and the underfed, which is why fountain manuals of the day carry whole chapters of egg lemonades, egg phosphates, egg chocolates and egg flips. The addition of orange juice and grated nutmeg recalls the older domestic pattern of the flip and the caudle, drinks in which egg, sweetening and spice were combined warm; it is tempting, though hard to document, to see the fountain as having taken that idea, swapped the spirits or ale for hot water off the tap, and sold it by the glass.