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Wine a la Egg
One ounce champagne syrup, 1 whole egg, small quantity cracked ice. Shake together with hand shaker; then add enough plain soda to fill the glass. Mix well by pouring from tumbler to shaker; strain through julep strainer into tumbler. Add a little grated nutmeg and serve.
This is a fountain drink built around a whole raw egg that is never heated at any point, which is what puts it out of reach today. The notes below explain the terms and the specific problem.
- The raw egg is the whole problemA whole shell egg is shaken with syrup, ice and carbonated water and served immediately. There is no cooking step, no hot liquid, and nothing in the glass with enough acidity or alcohol to matter, so anything present in the egg goes straight into the drink.
- Why 1905 could do it and we cannotWhy the period could do it and we cannot -- Salmonella Enteritidis became a widespread problem in commercial laying flocks in the later twentieth century, and the modern risk profile of an intact raw shell egg is not the one this book assumed. Public health guidance in the US and UK now treats raw shell egg in an uncooked drink as a hazard, and a particular one for children, elderly and immunocompromised drinkers.
- Not an alcoholic drink"Champagne syrup" was generally a fountain flavouring syrup — sugar, water, acid and a flavour extract — sold by soda supply houses, and published formulas for it are typically non-alcoholic. "Wine" in the title describes the flavour rather than the contents.
- Plain sodaAt a fountain this meant carbonated water drawn under pressure from the counter apparatus. The recipe gives no glass size; one ounce of syrup to a filled tumbler would suggest something in the region of 8 to 10 ounces, so a single serving.
- Julep strainerThe perforated bowl-shaped strainer that sits inside the shaker tin or mixing glass, still made and sold. It holds back the cracked ice while letting the egg foam through — a Hawthorne strainer with its spring would do the same job.
- The pouring stepPouring tumbler-to-shaker-and-back mixes the drink without shaking it, which would drive off the gas in the soda water.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe from a source that specifies pasteurized egg product or a heat-treated base, rather than adapting this one.
Egg drinks were a mainstay of the American soda fountain in the decades before Prohibition, sitting in the same commercial space that egg nog and the tavern flip occupied on the licensed side of the trade — the fountain version substituted flavouring syrup and carbonated water for spirits. Fountains sold them as much for nourishment as for pleasure: an egg phosphate or egg lemonade was pitched as something restorative taken standing at the counter, and drugstore fountains blurred the line between refreshment and tonic quite deliberately. Names like "Wine a la Egg" did the same work, borrowing the glamour of champagne for a drink built from a bottle of proprietary syrup. Fountain syrup catalogues of the period listed dozens of such flavours, champagne, claret and sherry among them, all of them non-alcoholic imitations sold to soda men by the gallon.