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[1] The classic New York egg cream. The recipe is (photo © Russ & Daughters).
[2] For 100 years or more, seltzer bottlers would deliver a heavy cases of glass soda siphons to egg cream lovers in New York and other cities (cocktail lovers, too). The bottles are now collectors items, but you can buy modern soda siphons like the one in the next photo (photo © Marco Jose Gonzalez).
[3] iSi makes beautiful soda siphons, both old-style like this, and a modern all-stainless-steel model (photo © iSi.
[4] With a soda syphon, you can get a bubbly head on your egg cream (photo © Make Your Own Soda).
[5] A strawberry egg cream. It’s the same recipe), just with strawberry syrup instead of chocolate syrup (photo © Polar Seltzer).
[6] Guittard, our chocolate syrup of preference, is made with fructose instead of corn- or high fructose corn syrup, and real vanilla.
[7] Fancy: This egg cream is rimmed with cookie crumbs (photo © Empire Diner | New York City).
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There is tuna in a tuna noodle casserole. There are strawberries in a strawberry shortcake. There’s ice cream in an ice cream soda.
But there’s no egg in an egg cream—and there’s no cream, either. The ingredients are milk, seltzer and chocolate syrup. In other words, it’s a carbonated chocolate soda made creamy with milk, or carbonated chocolate milk.
Since today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, we’ve been thinking about great Jewish-American food inventions. The egg cream, invented in a Jewish neighborhood in New York, is at the top of the list.
So our tip of the day is: Experience the legend and enjoy an egg cream.
We’ve included the regular recipe and our own diet version .
March 15th is National Egg Cream Day.
Below:
> The egg cream recipe.
> The history of the egg cream.
Elsewhere on The Nibble:
> The year’s 24 non-alcoholic beverage holidays (including juice and soft drinks).
> The year’s 16+ milk and cream holidays.
[7] In earlier times, a seltzer bottle produced the force to create a large, creamy head. Today, we settle for what we can create with a regular bottle (Gemini Photo).
RECIPE: THE CLASSIC NEW YORK EGG CREAM
While U-Bet** and other supermarket chocolate syrups have been the standard, we appreciate the superior flavor of the Guittard chocolate syrup, a gourmet syrup made by a fine chocolatier, without corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup (photo #4).
In a tall fountain glass (or any tall glass you have), combine:
2 tablespoons chocolate syrup (you can find Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup online, including a sugar-free version)
6 ounces whole milk (you can substitute lowfat, nonfat or nondairy milk)
Mix, then add:
6 ounces seltzer or club soda (soda water)
Serve with a straw. For a modern variation, use cherry- or raspberry-flavored club soda.
Note: If you don’t have large fountain glasses, use less milk and seltzer to fit into the glass. Adjust the sweetness to your preference.
Tip: If you want your drink extra-chocolatey, use a chocolate/fudge-flavored seltzer.
For a diet egg cream:
Use sugar-free chocolate syrup and nonfat or lowfat milk, plus seltzer.
We fill the glass 1/3 with milk, then add the soda. /li>
To make the drink sweeter, we add a packet of noncaloric sweetener to the milk, and stir before adding the soda.
[8] You can create an egg cream in any flavor. All you need is the flavored syrup (Gemini Photo).
EGG CREAM HISTORY
Many references say that the egg cream was likely invented in 1890 by a Brooklyn soda fountain and candy store owner, Louis Auster.
However, Auster’s store was in actually in the East Village of Manhattan, at the southeast corner of Second Avenue and Seventh Street.
In October 2008, the grandson of the founder of Ratner’s, the famous deli restaurant next door, set the record straight with his recollections of Louis Auster’s candy store and the egg creams made with Auster’s own secret chocolate syrup formula.
More exciting than a “two cents plain” (a glass of seltzer, or carbonated water*) and less expensive than a malted milk—not to mention great-tasting—the egg cream was a hit.
The most origin common story is that sometime in the 1890s, candy shop owner Louis Auster concocted the drink by accident. The story reports that he sold thousands a day.
But when Auster refused to sell the rights to the drink to an ice cream chain, a company executive called him an anti-Semitic slur and Auster vowed to take the formula to his grave.
Without Auster’s special syrup, other soda fountains relied on a Brooklyn original: Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup, a mixture of water, sugar, corn sweeteners, cocoa and some “secret things.”
There are at least two other origin stories for the name [source]:
One theory is that in the 1880s, Yiddish theater pioneer Boris Thomashevsky asked a New York City soda fountain to reproduce a drink he had discovered in Paris. But his request for the French chocolat et crème got lost in translation.
Some say the name is an Americanization of echt keem, Yiddish for “pure sweetness.”
Others suggest that it’s simply Brooklynese for “a cream.”
Perhaps the best is one that the foam on the top looks like beaten egg whites.
Carbonated soft drinks were in their infancy. Coca-Cola, a fountain syrup available in Atlanta starting in 1886 and first bottled in 1894, was not a northern soda fountain feature at the time (Coca-Cola history).†
Kids and adults alike loved the egg cream. It was enjoyed at soda fountains, with patrons sitting on stools or in booths, sipping egg creams through a straw.
Other soda fountain owners got in on the act, spreading the egg cream throughout New York City. The chocolate syrup of choice became Fox’s U-Bet.‡
And the egg cream was often enjoyed with a pretzel (photo #6), making the combo a sweet-and-salty snack.
Some soda fountains served the egg cream in glasses with silvery metal holders. Others just used a tall glass.
How did they make the famous drink?
First, the soda jerk pumped the syrup into the glass: two or three pumps, each pump the equivalent of a tablespoon and a half of syrup.
The milk followed, and then the seltzer, which produced a foamy white head.
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We’re old enough to have had egg creams mixed at a real soda fountain:
A long counter, often located in a drugstore or what we would today call a convenience store.
It had red-upholstered rotating stools, and soda taps (like beer taps) that delivered the seltzer needed for the egg cream, as well as to turn cola, cherry, and other syrups into glasses of soda (pump in the syrup, shoot in seltzer from the tap, stir gently).
Once, we had the opportunity to step behind the counter and “jerk” the taps.
Our attempts weren’t neat: our jerks overfilled the glasses and created a dribbled mess.
But it was fun!
The Wane Of The Egg Cream
Time marches on, and in the 1960s people became more interested in fast food than soda fountains. Plus, it was easy to pick up the myriad bottles (and later cans) of soda and other soft drinks, plus ice cream, at grocers.
After most of the remaining soda fountains and luncheonettes of New York disappeared in the 1970s.
They were replaced by fast food restaurants and delis, neither of which made egg creams; but occasionally you can find a diner that makes them.
So the egg cream faded from view.
Years later, in 1990, entrepreneur Jeff Glotzer, who fondly remembered the egg cream, founded Egg Cream America to produce Jeff’s Amazing New York Egg Cream. He discovered that no one had ever succeeded in carbonating milk and hired a beverage chemist. “It took a long time but he came up with our process,” said Jeff in a 1994 New York Times interview.
First discovered the bottles in our supermarket, and the diet version, which had negligible calories but tasted “amazing!” was our daily treat. When the supermarket no longer carried it, we found it online from Amazon, which carried them until 2014, when presumably they were discontinued.
His line, which included Diet Chocolate (the best seller), Diet Vanilla, and Diet Orange (like a Creamsicle!), has disappeared from earth, and is on the list of the Top 10 Discontinued Foods We Mourn.
We wax nostalgic every time we go to the movies and create our own soda from the self-service soft drink dispenser. Alas, there’s no chocolate soda, or we’d bring our own milk and make an egg cream on the spot!
[8] An old fashioned soda fountain, first located in pharmacies and later in standalone stores, department stores, etc. (Gemini Photo).
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*Seltzer and club soda are both soda water. The difference: seltzer is salt-free and club soda has salt.
**There’s no particular “magic” to Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup. It was created around 1900 by Herman Fox in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York, specifically to be used in soda fountains instead of Auster’s syrup. It thus became the go-to brand tradition. Our mom preferred Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But today, Hershey’s is made with high fructose corn syrup, while U-Bet retains the original corn syrup.
†It was the rise of the well-advertised Coca-Cola and other soft drinks that led to the wane of the egg cream, and the rise of fast food restaurants that led to the demise of the soda fountain itself.
‡In 1894, H. Fox & Company in Brooklyn began to produce chocolate syrup. The name U-bet wasn’t created until the 1930s.
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