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Lime Juice Shake
Egg, 1; Lime Juice, ½ ounce; Lemon Syrup, 1 ounce; Shaved Ice, ¼ tumblerful. Shake well, fill glass with plain soda, pour from shaker to glass and serve with 2 straws.
A fountain "egg shake" of the type poured all day in American drugstores. The measurements translate easily, but the central ingredient does not.
- The raw egg is the problemA whole egg is broken into the shaker and never heated at any stage; the drink is finished with cold soda water and served immediately. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella internally, and nothing in this procedure reduces it.
- Who is most at riskRaw-egg drinks are specifically discouraged for children, older adults, pregnant people and anyone immunocompromised.
- Shaking does not helpVigorous shaking with shaved ice chills the mixture into the range where bacteria persist rather than die. Acid from the lime juice and lemon syrup is likewise not a treatment; citrus juice at drink strength does not reliably kill pathogens.
- If you want an egg drinkUse a current recipe written around pasteurized eggs rather than adapting this one.
- Units, for referenceA half ounce of lime juice is one tablespoon; an ounce of syrup is two. If a fountain tumbler of the period held something like 8 to 10 ounces, a quarter tumblerful of shaved ice would be roughly a quarter to a third of a cup.
- Lemon syrup and plain sodaLemon syrup was a house-made sugar syrup flavored with lemon oil or juice, far more concentrated than bottled lemonade. "Plain soda" is unflavored carbonated water drawn from the fountain, and the recipe directs that the mixture be poured from shaker to glass after the soda is added.
The American soda fountain absorbed the egg drink from the tavern, where flips and egg nogs had long been sold as fortifying. By the late nineteenth century the dispenser, working behind a marble counter in a drugstore, was selling the same idea without the liquor: an egg shaken with fruit syrup and charged water, marketed as nourishment as much as refreshment, and often recommended to customers who looked tired. Lime juice carried a further association with health: the Royal Navy had issued lemon juice against scurvy from 1795 and shifted to West Indian lime juice only in the 1860s, so by the late nineteenth century lime itself had a few decades of service behind it. Manuals like this one were trade books, written for the young man behind the fountain, which is why the entries are terse lists of ounces and finish with a practical note about straws rather than with any word about the eater.