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Mid-Day Lunch
One ounce chocolate syrup, 1 ounce vanilla syrup, 2 ounces cream, 2 spoonfuls of malted milk, 1 egg. Shake and serve with a dainty wafer.
This is a fountain egg malted — a drink sold as a meal in itself. The raw egg is the problem, and it is not incidental to the recipe: it is the body of the drink.
- Raw egg, never heatedThe egg is broken into the shaker and served immediately, so nothing in the process brings it above refrigerator temperature. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella both on the shell and within the yolk, and a shaken drink distributes it through every mouthful. The fountain trade of the period had no way to know this; we do.
- Why shaking does not helpThere is no acid, no alcohol and no heat step here to reduce bacterial load — only syrup, cream and ice. Chilling slows growth but kills nothing. If you want a drink of this kind, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg product.
- Cream held at fountain temperatureCream at a soda fountain was kept chilled rather than cold-held to a modern standard, and dairy of the period was not reliably pasteurised. Treat the cream as a second risk running alongside the egg.
- The units, for the recordFountain ounces are fluid ounces: 1 oz of syrup is 2 tablespoons, 2 oz of cream is a quarter cup. "Two spoonfuls" of malted milk is unspecified; the recipe names neither the spoon nor whether it is level or heaped.
- Malted milkThe powder called for is the same malted milk sold today: dried milk with malted barley and wheat. It is what gives fountain drinks their particular toasted flavour.
- YieldOne glass. The named title, "Mid-Day Lunch," presents it as a light meal rather than a dessert.
The soda fountain of the early twentieth century was a lunch counter as much as a candy shop, and drinks like this one were sold frankly as food: an egg, cream and malted milk together carried enough protein and fat to stand in for a midday meal, which is exactly what the title claims. Malted milk powder was commercialised in the 1880s as an invalid and infant food, and druggists moved it onto the counter as a tonic, then as a flavour. Egg drinks belonged to the same logic as the older egg nog and egg phosphate: the raw egg was understood as strengthening, and "one egg in it" was a selling point rather than something to apologise for. The dainty wafer on the saucer suggests a drink priced and presented as a small restaurant order.