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Triple Egg Phosphate
One whole egg, 1 teaspoonful malted milk, ½ ounce clam bouillon, 1 ounce hock syrup, ¼ tumblerful cracked ice. Shake well, strain and add 1 dash of liquid phosphate, filling with plain soda. Pour from shaker to tumbler and serve with nutmeg and straw.
This is a fountain drink built on a raw shell egg that is never heated at any point, thinned with cracked ice and soda. It is readable as a period document, but it cannot be assembled and served today.
- The raw egg is the problemThe whole egg goes into the shaker uncooked and is served immediately, so nothing in the procedure brings it near the 160F needed to inactivate Salmonella. The acid phosphate and the ice do not pasteurise anything; a dash of dilute phosphoric acid in a tumbler of soda is nowhere near enough to make a raw egg safe.
- Clam bouillon compounds itHalf an ounce of shellfish broth, added cold and never reheated in this procedure, is a second uncontrolled protein in the same glass. Clam bouillon was a familiar fountain ingredient; the recipe gives no times or temperatures for holding it.
- What acid phosphate was"Liquid phosphate" is acid phosphate, a dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, sold to fountains as a sour agent that sharpens sweet syrups without the fruitiness of citric acid. It is still made for cocktail and soda use and is not the hazard in this recipe.
- Hock syrup"Hock" is the old English name for Rhine wine, from Hochheim. A fountain hock syrup was a flavouring syrup pitched at that grape-and-flower profile rather than an alcoholic ingredient. It has no shelf presence today, and substitutes are guesswork.
- Malted milkMalted milk powder here is the Horlick's-style blend of malted barley, wheat flour and evaporated milk solids, used at fountains as a body-builder and mild sweetener. The modern product is close enough to the original to be recognisable.
- Vessels and measuresA soda-fountain tumbler of the period ran roughly 8 to 10 ounces, so a quarter tumblerful of cracked ice is about 2 to 2.5 ounces, roughly a quarter of a cup. Fluid ounces are meant throughout for the bouillon and syrup.
- The nameThe recipe calls for one whole egg, so 'triple' cannot refer to three eggs; it may point to the three flavouring elements shaken with it -- malted milk, bouillon and hock syrup -- though the text does not say so. Egg drinks at the fountain were sold as strength-giving, which is why a savoury broth sits beside a wine-flavoured syrup without apology.
- If you want an egg sodaUse a current recipe from a source that specifies pasteurised eggs and gives handling instructions.
Egg drinks were the backbone of the American soda fountain's "health" trade from the 1880s through the 1920s, when the dispenser sold himself as a near relation of the pharmacist and the counter stood in an actual drugstore. Acid phosphate arrived in the 1870s, promoted as a nerve tonic as much as a flavouring, and the phosphate became the standard sour foundation for these mixtures. A whole raw egg was understood as concentrated nourishment, prescribed for invalids and convalescents, and combinations like this one -- egg, malted milk, meat or shellfish broth -- sat on the menu as something between refreshment and medicine. Clam bouillon in particular was a fountain staple, served hot in winter as an alternative to beef tea. What the recipe records is a moment when a drugstore counter was expected to feed people who were unwell, before bacteriology reached the fountain and before the trade drifted toward the purely sweet sodas that survived it.