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Egg Phosphate (Draw into a soda water tumbler)
Draw into a soda water tumbler 2 ounces American Maltese Orange Syrup, add a fresh egg, a few squirts of acid phosphate, and a small piece of ice. Shake well. Fill shaker with soda water, using large stream only, and strain into a thin 9-ounce tumbler.
This is a soda fountain egg phosphate of the type dispensed by the thousand before the First World War. The drink is built on a whole raw egg that is never heated at any point, which is the reason it cannot be recommended today.
- The raw egg is the problemThe egg goes into the tumbler whole and fresh from the shell and is shaken with cold syrup, ice and soda. Nothing in the sequence brings it anywhere near the 71C/160F at which Salmonella in egg is reliably destroyed, and the drink is served immediately at fountain temperature.
- The acid does not sterilise anythingAcid phosphate is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, added for tartness and mouthfeel. A few squirts into eight ounces of sweetened soda leaves a pH nowhere near low enough, and nowhere near long enough in contact, to make a raw egg safe.
- Shell eggs in 1900 versus nowThe recipe calls only for "a fresh egg." Freshness has never been a guard against internal contamination, which is what modern egg-safety guidance is written around. If you want an egg cream or a phosphate today, work from a current recipe.
- Acid phosphateStill made and sold for bar and fountain use, so the ingredient itself is not the obstacle here. It is not the same thing as phosphoric acid concentrate and should not be substituted with one.
- American Maltese Orange SyrupA fountain syrup of the period, orange-flavoured and heavily sweetened; the name points to the Maltese, or blood, orange. Nothing is sold under that label today.
- The vesselsA soda water tumbler and shaker were the working glasses behind the counter; the thin 9-ounce tumbler was the service glass. "Large stream only" refers to the coarse, high-volume stream of the soda draught arm rather than the fine spray, so the carbonation helps mix the drink.
Egg drinks were a staple of the American soda fountain from the later nineteenth century onward. They sat at the intersection of refreshment and tonic: a raw egg was widely regarded as building food, and the fountain sold it as nourishment rather than indulgence. Acid phosphate began as a medicinal preparation of the nineteenth century, sold through the drug trade, and carried the same double character. The soda fountain itself grew out of the drugstore, and books of this kind were trade manuals for dispensers, written for a working counterman who needed the count of ounces, not an explanation.