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Egg Sauer
Two ounces of the mixed syrups used in the egg phosphate described above, a little water, ice, dash of maraschino cordial; shake, add 1 egg and soda.
A fountain drink from the era when a whole raw egg was shaken into a glass as a matter of course. The terms are worth decoding, but the drink itself is not one to reproduce.
- The raw egg is the problemThe egg goes into the glass whole and uncooked, and nothing in the procedure — cold syrup, ice, carbonated water — brings it anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella. If you want a modern egg-based fountain drink, use a current recipe built around pasteurized egg product.
- "Sauer" is a fountain term, not German"Sauer" is a fountain spelling -- Soda men spelled it variously, sour and sauer, and it meant an acid drink. It is the same family as the bar sour, built with syrup and acid instead of citrus.
- Two ounces of syrupThat is a quarter cup of sweet syrup per glass, finished with a great deal of soda. Fountain sweetness levels of this period run above modern taste.
- Acid phosphateThe "egg phosphate described above" depends on acid phosphate, a dilute phosphoric acid solution that was standard fountain equipment and vanished from most kitchens for decades. It is made again by a few specialty producers and is not interchangeable with lemon juice, which brings its own flavor.
- Maraschino cordialThis means the clear Dalmatian marasca cherry liqueur, made with the pits and faintly bitter, not the sweet red syrup drained off a jar of cocktail cherries. A dash was a genuine dash — well under a teaspoon.
- "Soda"Carbonated water drawn under pressure from a fountain, far more forceful than a bottle of seltzer. Old fountain instructions assume a coarse stream that does the mixing and raises a head of foam on its own.
Egg drinks were a fixture of the American soda fountain from the 1880s through the 1920s, sitting somewhere between refreshment and tonic: the egg was understood as nourishment, and fountains freely advertised such drinks as building up the run-down clerk or the convalescent. The phosphate that underpins this one came out of the same impulse, acid phosphate having been promoted as a nerve and digestive aid before it settled into being simply a tart, mineral-tasting flavoring. Trade manuals like this one existed to give the dispenser a repertoire he could vary endlessly from a handful of syrups on the counter, which is why the recipe begins by pointing back to another formula on an earlier page rather than listing its own syrups. The whole category faded as bottled soft drinks took over the fountain's business.