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Hot Egg Cherry Blaze
Prepare like hot egg checkerberry, only use cherry syrup and lemon juice proportions of 1 ounce in proportions of 1 ounce and 1 dram, respectively, instead of the wintergreen and 1 dram, respectively, instead of the wintergreen or orange syrups. Sprinkling on the beverage a few drops of alcohol and igniting the latter will make it a real blaze.
A winter fountain drink written as a variation, so the base formula lives on the previous page: a whole egg beaten with syrup and hot water or hot milk, drawn into a mug and served at once. Two things in it are out of bounds today.
- The egg is never cookedFountain hot drinks of this type were generally built by beating a raw egg with syrup and shooting hot water or hot milk over it from the urn faucet; the base recipe here is on the previous page and is not reproduced. On that method the mixture is diluted and served immediately, so the egg is unlikely ever to reach a pasteurizing temperature for any useful length of time. This is raw egg in a warm liquid, which is the least favourable condition possible for Salmonella.
- The flaming spiritSprinkling alcohol on the surface and lighting it is presentation, not cooking. It adds nothing to the temperature of the drink, and pouring or splashing a spirit near an open flame risks setting the counter or your sleeve alight. Burning alcohol is nearly invisible in daylight.
- Dram, in this bookA fluid dram is one-eighth of a fluid ounce, roughly 3.7 mL or a scant three-quarters of a teaspoon. So the call is for 2 tablespoons of cherry syrup against a very small dash of lemon juice — the lemon is there to cut the sugar, not to be tasted as lemon.
- CheckerberryThe parent recipe's flavour is checkerberry, an American name for Gaultheria procumbens, the same plant sold as wintergreen. Fountain wintergreen syrup of this era was commonly flavoured with methyl salicylate, which is toxic in quantity and is another reason these old syrup formulas do not transfer directly to a modern kitchen.
- The garbled sentenceThe verbatim text repeats itself, apparently a typesetting duplication. Read it as: use cherry syrup and lemon juice, 1 ounce and 1 dram respectively, in place of the wintergreen or orange syrups.
- If you want the drinkA hot cherry egg drink is a reasonable idea; the method here is not. Use a current recipe built on pasteurized eggs or a cooked custard base, and leave the flaming spirit off.
Soda fountains did not close in winter — they switched the marble counter over to hot trade, and by the 1900s a well-run fountain offered hot beef bouillon, hot malted milk, hot chocolate and a long list of hot egg drinks drawn with steam or from a hot-water faucet. The egg drinks were sold as much for nourishment as for pleasure; a beaten egg in a hot sweet liquid was widely regarded as convalescent food, and the fountain clerk was selling something close to a tonic. Cherry and checkerberry were both standard fountain syrups of the period, checkerberry being the American name for wintergreen. The flaming finish belongs to a different impulse entirely: fountain manuals of these years are full of showy touches meant to draw a crowd at the counter, and a drink that could be set alight in front of the customer earned its place on the card by spectacle rather than flavour.