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Vichy a la Egg
One whole egg, ½ glass shaved ice, 1 ounce pure water. Shake thoroughly; then add slowly, while constantly stirring, enough vichy water to fill the glass.
This is a raw-egg fountain drink, one of a family of "egg phosphates" and egg lemonades that were poured across American drug-store counters by the thousand. The egg is never heated at any point, which is why it cannot be recommended today.
- Why it fails nowThe whole egg is broken raw into the shaker and served immediately. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella Enteritidis both on the shell and within the yolk, and nothing in this procedure — ice, water, or carbonated vichy — reduces that risk. There is no hold time, no heat, and no acid strong enough to matter.
- Not the same as a cooked custardRaw egg stirred into a batter that will be baked is an ordinary kitchen matter. Raw egg suspended in cold carbonated water and handed to a customer is not; the drink is the egg. If you want a modern version, use a current recipe built on pasteurised shell eggs or pasteurised liquid egg.
- Vichy waterVichy meant naturally alkaline mineral water from the springs at Vichy, France, or a fountain imitation of it charged with sodium bicarbonate and carbon dioxide. It was chiefly stocked as a digestive rather than as a mixer, though the recipe says nothing about what the alkalinity contributes here.
- "1 ounce pure water"Fountain manuals distinguished plain filtered water from the charged water in the syphon lines. The ounce may simply be there to loosen the egg before shaking, though the recipe gives no reason for it.
- Half a glass of shaved iceA fountain glass of the period ran roughly 8 to 10 ounces, so this is about 4 or 5 ounces of finely shaved ice — much colder and faster-diluting than modern cubes. The finished drink was one serving, filled to the rim.
- The stirring instructionAdding the vichy slowly while stirring was not fussiness. Poured fast onto a shaken egg, carbonated water throws foam over the lip and drives off the gas that made the drink worth ordering.
Egg drinks were the soda fountain's answer to the invalid's diet. Through the second half of the nineteenth century a raw egg beaten into wine, milk, or mineral water was often recommended for the weak, the consumptive, and the dyspeptic, and when the dispensing chemist's counter grew into the soda fountain, that pharmacy logic came with it — hence the appearance of a plain egg-and-vichy in a book otherwise full of phosphates and sundaes. Vichy water itself had a long reputation as an alkaline remedy for sour stomach and gout, so the combination read to a customer of the day as tonic rather than treat. The whole category faded for several reasons — growing attention to bacteriology and food safety played some part, though the decline of the soda fountain itself was the larger factor.