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Lambrakis' Favorite
Into a mixing glass put ½ ounce of coca-cola, ½ ounce of chocolate syrup, 2 ounces of plain cream, 3 teaspoonfuls of malted milk; shake well, transfer into a 12-ounce bell glass and fill with hot water. This drink can be made with an egg or it may be served cold.
A hot malted drink built on fountain ingredients, most of which still exist in some form. The one thing to get right is dissolving the malt powder before the hot water goes in.
- "Coca-cola" means the syrupAt a fountain this was the concentrated Coca-Cola syrup dispensed before carbonated water was added, not the finished bottled drink. Half an ounce of syrup is roughly a tablespoon; bottled cola will read thinner and much less intense, so the flavour will barely register.
- Plain creamIn fountain usage this meant unsweetened dairy cream, probably a coffee-cream grade rather than whipping cream; modern light cream is the closest match, and half-and-half will read thinner. Heavy cream makes the drink cloying at two ounces.
- Malted milkThe malted milk powder of the fountain era was a plain malted grain and dried milk product, essentially unsweetened. Modern malted milk powders are usually sweetened, and chocolate versions are also sold; with the chocolate syrup already in the glass, use a plain malt powder if you can find one and expect the drink sweeter than intended if you cannot.
- Dissolve before you fillShake the syrups, cream and malt together cold and thoroughly until no dry powder remains, then add the hot water. Malt powder hit directly with hot liquid clumps and settles in a gritty layer at the bottom of the glass.
- A 12-ounce bell glassThe flared, footed fountain glass held 12 ounces to the brim. Any 12-ounce heatproof glass or a mug works; the hot water fill amounts to about 8 ounces.
- Hot water temperatureFountains drew from a hot water tap. Let the kettle stand a minute or two rather than pouring straight off a rolling boil, which risks breaking the cream.
- The egg versionAn egg shaken in raw and then met with hot water is not brought anywhere near a temperature that pasteurises it. If you want the egg, use a pasteurised shell egg or liquid pasteurised egg.
- Served coldThe recipe allows the same base to be shaken and served cold instead of filled with hot water.
- YieldOne 12-ounce drink.
Soda fountain manuals of this kind were trade books, written for the dispenser behind the marble counter rather than for the home, and they are full of named drinks like this one — house specialties often said to be credited to the man who invented them or to the proprietor who sold them, though the origin of this particular drink is not documented. Lambrakis is a Greek surname, and the era in which these books circulated was also, by most accounts, the era in which Greek immigrants ran a great many American candy stores, confectioneries and soda fountains, particularly in the industrial Midwest and Northeast, so the connection here is plausible inference rather than established fact. The two defining ingredients place the drink firmly in its moment: malted milk powder, generally credited to the Horlick brothers, James and William, and their dried malt and milk preparation of the 1880s, began as an invalid and infant food and was taken up by fountains as a body-building tonic, while Coca-Cola syrup was still being poured by the half ounce as one flavouring among dozens rather than treated as a finished beverage. Hot fountain drinks like this one were the winter half of the trade, sold when nobody wanted an ice cream soda.