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Orange Snow
Three whole eggs, ¼ sheet or 1 teaspoonful gelatin, 3½ quarts milk and water, ½ pint prepared orange, 2 ounces acid solution phosphates. Sweeten to suit taste.
This is a bulk fountain formula — roughly a gallon of drink, dispensed by the glass — and it depends on raw eggs beaten into cold milk that is never heated at any stage.
- Raw egg in a cold dairy drinkThree whole eggs go into three and a half quarts of milk and water and nothing in the process brings the mixture above room temperature. Shell eggs are a recognised vehicle for Salmonella Enteritidis, and the acid phosphate does not lower the pH anywhere near far enough to inactivate it.
- Held, not made to orderA batch of this size is not a single serving, and a raw-egg-and-milk mixture left standing at room temperature is the classic condition for bacterial growth. The recipe gives no instruction to chill it or to use it at once.
- The gelatin does nothing protectiveA quarter sheet or teaspoonful of gelatin is there for body and to hold the foam. The recipe gives no method for incorporating it; even if it were dissolved in a little hot water first, that would touch only a fraction of the liquid and pasteurise nothing. If you want a drink like this, use a current recipe built on pasteurised egg product.
- What "prepared orange" meantMost likely not plain juice but a fountain orange syrup, sugar-heavy. A pint and a half of it is doing much of the sweetening work before the closing instruction to sweeten further to taste.
- Acid solution phosphatesAcid phosphate is a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, used across the soda counter to give a dry tartness that citric acid does not. It is still made for cocktail and soda work.
- "Milk and water"The book gives no ratio for the milk-and-water mixture, so the split is genuinely at the dispenser's discretion.
- YieldThree and a half quarts of base plus the syrup makes something over a gallon -- around seventeen eight-ounce glasses, which tells you plainly this was counter stock rather than a home recipe.
The soda fountain sold far more than carbonated water: egg drinks, phosphates, lactarts and "snows" were staples of a trade that positioned itself as half confectioner, half druggist. Eggs were understood as nourishment, and egg drinks were sold as restorative -- the same logic that put egg into flips and nogs. The word snow in fountain usage seems to point to the foam: whole eggs worked into the mix threw a white head that sat on the glass, and the gelatin would help keep it from collapsing before the drink reached the customer. Acid phosphate is the ghost ingredient of the period, appearing across a great many of these formulas; it survived the fountain's decline mainly in Horsford's-style preparations and has been revived by bartenders looking for sourness without citrus. Formula books like this one were written for the dispenser behind the counter, not the cook at home, which is why the quantities run to gallons and the sweetening is left to the operator's judgement.