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Grape Glace
Beat thoroughly the whites of 4 eggs, and stir in 1 pound of powdered sugar; then add 1 pint grape juice, 1 pint water, and 1 pound more of powdered sugar. Stir well until sugar is dissolved, and serve from a pitcher or glass dish with ladle.
This is a soda-fountain syrup base built on raw, uncooked egg white — the whites are never heated at any stage, and the finished mixture stands in an open pitcher to be ladled out over a service period.
- Raw egg white, never heatedThe whites go in beaten and stay raw from start to service. Salmonella on and in shell eggs is destroyed only by heat (or by using pasteurised whites); sugar and grape juice do neither. Nothing in this method brings the eggs anywhere near a safe temperature.
- Standing at fountain temperatureThe recipe directs that it be served from an open pitcher or glass dish with a ladle, so the mixture stands unrefrigerated for however long service lasts. A sweetened, protein-containing liquid held at room temperature is a growth medium, and the sugar concentration here — heavy as it is — is diluted by a pint of water and a pint of juice, well below the level that would inhibit bacteria.
- No acidity or alcohol to rely onNo alcohol and no dependable acid hurdle -- Some period egg drinks leaned on brandy or a strong acid. Grape juice is acidic, but here it is cut with an equal volume of water and buffered by the egg white, and there is no spirit at all, so nothing reliably does the work that heat is not doing.
- Two pounds of sugar is not a preservative hereSugar preserves at jam-and-jelly concentrations, achieved by boiling off water. Two pounds dissolved into a quart of liquid gives a syrup that is sweet but nowhere near the water activity that would keep it stable on a counter.
- Volume and serviceAs written this makes something over a quart and a half, served straight from the pitcher or dish with a ladle — a large batch to hold unrefrigerated.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe for a grape shrub, grape syrup, or an egg-white drink built on pasteurised whites, and follow its temperatures and holding times.
Soda-fountain manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries record "glaces" — thick, foamy, sweetened bases whipped with egg white so they would hold air and cling to the inside of the glass when cut with carbonated water. The egg was there for texture and body, not richness, and the same trick survives in the fizz cocktails and in the meringue-topped sodas of the same era. Grape juice appears often in these books because unfermented bottled grape juice had become a reliable commercial product by the 1890s, promoted heavily as a temperance drink; the soda fountain and the anti-alcohol movement grew up together, and a fountain needed sweet, showy, non-alcoholic mixtures to sell. That such a book could specify raw whites in an open pitcher tells you a good deal about how eggs were understood before pasteurisation and refrigeration were routine.