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Egg Phosphate (Break egg in mixing glass add)
Break 1 egg in mixing glass, add 1½ ounces orange syrup, 1½ ounces lemon syrup, phosphate to your customer's taste, shaved ice, shake well; use fine stream and serve in bell glass.
A soda-fountain egg drink of the sort dispensed by the thousand before refrigeration and egg safety regulation. The terms are worth knowing even though the drink is not one to build.
- Why this one failsThe egg is broken raw into the glass, shaken with ice, and served immediately; nothing in the procedure brings it above about 40F. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella internally, and neither shaking nor the acidity of the phosphate inactivates it. Anyone wanting a foamed egg drink should follow a current recipe built on pasteurized eggs.
- The acid is not a preservativeAcid phosphate is far too dilute to make raw egg safe — it exists to add tartness and a dry finish, nothing more. The same is true of the citrus syrups, which are sugar-based flavorings rather than acidifiers.
- "Phosphate"Fountain acid phosphate is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, dispensed a few drops to a dash at a time from a small bottle at the counter. It is still sold to bartenders; it is not the same thing as phosphate food additives.
- Syrup ouncesThe original reads "½ ounces" for each syrup, meaning half a fluid ounce — a tablespoon.
- Fine streamFountain draft arms offered more than one delivery, including a coarse stream for filling and a fine, higher-velocity stream used to raise foam on egg and cream drinks.
- Bell glassA footed, flaring fountain glass, wider at the rim than at the base.
Egg drinks were fountain staples from the 1880s through Prohibition, sold as much for nourishment as for refreshment — a raw egg shaken into soda water was thought a tonic for the thin, the convalescent and the overworked clerk, and druggists dispensing them from behind a prescription counter carried some of that authority into the soda trade. The phosphate itself belongs to the same pharmaceutical lineage: acid phosphate was marketed in the later nineteenth century as a nerve and digestive preparation before it settled into the role of a cheap, sharp souring agent that made sweet syrups drinkable in quantity. Manuals like this one were written for the working dispenser, which is why the instruction is "phosphate to your customer's taste" rather than a measured amount. Raw-egg fountain drinks faded along with the soda fountain trade itself in the middle of the twentieth century.