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Flowing Stream
Shaved Ice, ½ tumblerful; Egg, 1.
Vanilla and Orange Syrup 1 ounce each Ice Cream, 1 tablespoonful.
A few dashes of angostura bitters, rum, and orange extract. Fill glass nearly full of cream, shake well, nutmeg on top, small quantity of soda water, fine stream. Serve with spoon and straws.
A dispenser's shorthand from behind the marble counter, written for someone with a soda spigot, a shaker, and a row of syrup pumps within arm's reach. The reason it cannot be made as printed is the whole raw egg, which is never heated at any point.
- Raw egg, never cookedThe egg goes into the shaker whole and raw and is served immediately over ice. Nothing in the procedure brings it near the 160F at which Salmonella in a shell egg is reliably killed, and the shaken, chilled, sugary mixture is a hospitable medium if it sits. The recipe carries no assurance about the freshness or handling of the egg. If you want a drink of this type, use a current recipe built on pasteurized shell eggs or carton egg product.
- Tumbler and "½ tumblerful"A fountain tumbler of the period ran roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces, so the shaved ice is something like half to two-thirds of a cup, loosely packed. It is there to chill and dilute.
- Syrup measuresAn ounce of syrup is 2 tablespoons. Two ounces total of vanilla and orange syrup is a good deal of sugar by modern palates.
- "Cream" appears twiceThe tablespoonful of ice cream and the later instruction to "fill glass nearly full of cream" are two different things: the second means sweet cream or the fountain's milk-and-cream mix, not more ice cream. The ambiguity is genuine and the original never resolves it.
- "Fine stream"Fountain draft apparatus offered a coarse stream for volume and a fine stream for finishing. Here the soda is added last and in small quantity through the fine stream.
- Bitters, rum, orange extract"A few dashes" of each is all the original gives. The rum reads as a flavouring in the manner of the period's egg drinks rather than a measured pour, and concentrated orange extract is potent, so a very small amount goes a long way.
- YieldOne glass, one customer, served at once with both a spoon and straws because the ice cream and foam had to be eaten as well as drunk.
Egg drinks were the backbone of the American soda fountain's "nourishing" line, and are often said to have been sold less as treats than as something between a refreshment and a tonic for the run-down clerk or the convalescent -- an inheritance generally traced to the tavern flip and the sickroom eggnog. Recipes of this sort, with a whole egg shaken into syrup, cream, and carbonated water, filled the trade manuals from the 1890s through the 1920s, and the small measures of rum and bitters are typical of fountain formulas written before Prohibition, when a dispenser might keep a bottle of spirits alongside the extracts strictly for flavoring. The name is descriptive rather than historical: fountain books gave hundreds of near-identical formulas fanciful titles like this one so that each shop could offer a list of specialties, and "Flowing Stream" points straight at the finishing technique in the last line.