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Nectar Cream Syrup (Alderney Cream gallon)
Alderney Cream, 1 gallon; Granulated Sugar, 10 lbs.; Eggs, both white and yolk, beaten very light, 4; American Extract Vanilla, 2 ounces; American Extract Lemon, 2 ounces. In dispensing this drink, ice is shaved into the tumbler until it is two-thirds full; the syrup and soda water are then drawn, and more ice shaved on top. Shaving ice on top is essential. It adds greatly to the attractiveness of the drink.
This is a fountain "cream syrup" — a bulk mix held in a jar under the marble counter and drawn by the ounce through a working day. Every element of it is a problem in a modern kitchen, and the trouble is not the flavouring but the fact that nothing is ever heated.
- Raw egg in a held bulk mixFour whole eggs are beaten into a gallon of cream and never cooked. Any Salmonella present is distributed through the whole batch and has hours of fountain-side handling to multiply. There is no cooking step later, unlike raw egg in a cake batter or a custard base.
- Cream that never reaches a safe temperatureA gallon of cream sitting in a syrup jar behind a counter spends its life in the range where dairy pathogens grow. Fountains of the period had ice rather than measured refrigeration to rely on.
- Sugar is not doing the preserving hereSugar may not be doing the preserving here -- Ten pounds of sugar to a gallon of cream is a heavy sugar load, but a cream-based syrup carries fat, protein and egg as well as water, and it should not be assumed to keep the way a plain sugar-and-water fountain syrup does.
- Alderney creamAlderney cattle were a Channel Island breed, closely related to the Jersey and Guernsey and effectively absorbed into them; the name in trade simply meant very rich, high-butterfat cream. No modern supermarket product corresponds to it directly.
- The extractsTwo ounces each of vanilla and lemon extract is presumably by volume — about a quarter cup of each, alcohol-based, into a gallon. "American Extract" reads as a proprietary name rather than a grade.
- Shaved iceThe instruction assumes ice chipped from a block with a hand shaver, which gives fine snow that packs and floats. Machine-crushed ice or cubes will not give the appearance the original is after.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe for an egg cream or cream soda syrup, one that either cooks the dairy base or omits egg entirely.
Cream syrups belong to the era when the drugstore soda fountain was a serious commercial kitchen with its own trade literature — manuals written for the dispenser standing behind the marble, not for the household cook. "Nectar" was one of a family of fountain flavour names (nectar, ambrosia) that signalled a rich, egg-and-cream drink rather than a plain fruit soda, and the vanilla-lemon pairing is often said to have served as a base for that class. The specification of Alderney cream is a period marker: before breed names were consolidated and butterfat was measured and printed on a carton, a recipe named the cow to indicate richness. The closing note that shaved ice on top "adds greatly to the attractiveness of the drink" is a reminder of what these books were really teaching — the fountain sold spectacle as much as flavour, and presentation instructions sit in the recipe alongside the ingredients.