From VOICES: Foodways by Lynn Case Ekfelt

Volume 34
Fall-Winter
2008

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Yes, an egg cream is a chocolate soda, and no, it contains neither eggs nor cream. Like all mythic icons, the egg cream’s origins are mysterious.

Lynn Case Ekfelt is retired from her position as a special collections librarian and university archivist at St. Lawrence University. She is the author of Good Food Served Right: Traditional Recipes and Food Customs from New York’s North Country (Canton, New York: Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, 2000), available on-line from our New York Traditions gallery store. This is her final column for Voices.

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My husband and I recently made a pilgrimage to New York City to taste an egg cream. When I told her our plans, one of my friends said, “Only you would travel eight hours to taste a soda.” Maybe so, but for loyal fans of the egg cream, that simple soda has all the evocative potential of Proust’s madeleines.

Yes, an egg cream is a chocolate soda, and no, it contains neither eggs nor cream. Like all mythic icons, the egg cream’s origins are mysterious. Although most people seem to agree that it was invented in 1890 by Louis Auster, a Jewish candy shop owner in Brooklyn, no one is sure where it got its name. Of course, various theories have been propounded: Auster did put eggs and cream into his original soda, but later changed the formula, keeping the old name. . . . The froth on top looked like egg white. . . . “Egg cream” is a corruption of a Yiddish phrase now forgotten. . . . Eggs and cream were used in elegant dishes, so by calling his soda an egg cream, Auster was appealing to his customers’ desire to emulate the rich and famous. They all sound plausible, so pick your favorite.

New York's Best Egg Creams

However vague connoisseurs may be about the origins of the name, they are firm about the particulars of the construction. It must be made with Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup, manufactured in Brooklyn. It must be made in an old-fashioned Coke glass. It must be made only with seltzer water squirted through a siphon, never with club soda. It must be drunk standing up and gulped down immediately before it goes flat.

The Original Brooklyn Egg Cream

This recipe comes straight from the web site of the experts at Fox’s, makers of U-bet chocolate syrup—it couldn’t be more authentic.

Take a tall, chilled, straight-sided eight-ounce glass. Spoon one inch of U-bet chocolate syrup into glass. Add one inch whole milk. Tilt the glass and spray seltzer (from a pressurized cylinder only) off a spoon to make a big chocolate head. Stir, drink, enjoy.

As a native Buffalonian, I’d never heard of this delicacy until I had lunch with my former coworker Joan Larsen, born and raised in New York. She waxed nostalgic about childhood trips to Gladys and Sam’s candy store, where her family went for their egg creams. Apparently no one ever made them at home, although it seems that would have been easy enough in those days, when a wooden box of seltzer in bottles with siphons arrived weekly at every door in her neighborhood. But no, one made a trip to the candy store or to its more upscale sibling, the luncheonette, and let the soda jerk perform the magic.

I decided we needed to try two versions of this nectar for the sake of comparison, so I did a little research online. Not too surprisingly, there were several web sites where devotees vigorously argued the merits of their favorite purveyors. We picked the two that seemed the most popular and set off. The candy store seems to have been supplanted by the magazine shop as the venue of choice for egg creams. We went first to the Gem Spa, which despite its ritzy name, is basically a tiny corner shop selling lottery tickets, magazines, cigarettes, postcards, and—from a miniscule counter—egg creams. Ours came in a paper cup rather than the iconic Coke glass, but it had a nice foamy head. We slurped as fast as we could, but it was difficult to get to the bottom of the drink before it went flat and turned into watery chocolate milk. Still, there was a lot to be said for the combination of chocolate and fizz, however ephemeral.

We decided our palates needed a break before our next sample, so we took a side trip through Tompkins Park, pausing to watch a group of men playing speed chess with clocks. Thirsty again at last, we crossed the street to Ray’s, an incredibly tiny storefront. It was just wide enough for a door, a counter, and a space for the elderly counterman. Belgian fries seemed to be the specialty of the house, but we were on a mission, so we ordered our comparison chocolate egg cream from a long list of definitely unorthodox flavors. Mango egg cream? I don’t think I’d want to hear what Louis Auster would say to that! Again, it appeared in a paper cup. Maybe in these hectic times no one wants to stand still even long enough to guzzle a quick egg cream and return a real glass to the proprietor. This one seemed to go flat even more quickly than the first, although in compensation, it did have a deeper chocolate flavor.

The bottom line? Egg creams are very good, but they are too soon gone. I’d rather linger over a super-thick chocolate milkshake, the ambrosia of my childhood.

Lynn Case Ekfelt’s Foodways column was published in Voices Vol. 34, Fall-Winter 2008. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now.