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San Souci
One-half ounce pineapple syrup, ½ ounce orange syrup, ½ ounce vanilla syrup, 1 egg, 1 ounce ice cream, 2 dashes brandy, ¼ glass cracked ice. Shake, strain, toss and serve.
This is a fountain egg drink: a whole raw egg shaken with flavoring syrups, a spoonful of ice cream and a little brandy, strained and served cold. Nothing in it is ever heated, and that is the problem.
- The egg is never cookedA whole shell egg goes into the shaker and the drink is strained and served immediately. Salmonella in a raw egg is not killed by cold syrup, ice, or the two dashes of brandy, which amount to a fraction of a percent alcohol in the finished glass. Shaking with cracked ice does nothing but chill it.
- Why the fountain got away with itWhatever the period practice, modern egg handling has not made a raw shell egg in a cold drink safe, and a recipe written to be shaken and drunk on the spot leaves no step where anything is brought to temperature.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe from a source that specifies pasteurized egg product or an egg-free build. Do not adapt the instructions above.
- Reading the measures, for interestFountain syrup ounces are fluid ounces, so the three flavoring syrups total 1.5 oz, about 3 tablespoons. "1/4 glass cracked ice" refers to the mixing glass, whose size the recipe does not specify. "Toss" appears to mean pouring the drink between two vessels to aerate it, though here it is listed after straining.
Egg drinks were a staple of the American soda fountain in the later nineteenth century, sold as much for nourishment as for pleasure — the egg was understood as food, and the fountain positioned itself as a respectable alternative to the saloon, which makes the two dashes of brandy here a small piece of pharmacy-counter licence rather than a real drink. The name is the French sans souci, "without care," a stock label for pleasure gardens, steamboats, hotels and racehorses through the nineteenth century, and dispensers borrowed such names freely. The pineapple-orange-vanilla combination is typical: fruit syrups gave color and acid, vanilla rounded them, and the egg and ice cream supplied the body that made the drink worth its price., </br>