It took ages for 3 simple ingredients – milk, seltzer and chocolate – to join forces and become an egg cream.

Mmmm...nothing beats a foamy, chocolatey New York soda fountain egg cream. It amazes me that out-of-towners (and some in-towners as well) still think that an egg cream has eggs and cream in it. Lots of people have heard of egg creams, but have never tasted one and don’t know how they’re made. And many more are unaware of the long struggle and experimentation that went into its creation. Maybe I can help.  

The reason behind the misleading name is actually quite simple. The egg cream was invented in the most impoverished section of turn-of-the-century New York: the Lower East Side. While fancy refreshment places in wealthier districts offered eggy, ice-creamy treats, the lowly denizens of the LES, mostly Jewish, could only afford the basics: a “2-cent plain” (glass of seltzer) with perhaps a flavoring for a penny or two more. When an enterprising candy store owner named Louis Auster mixed milk into the seltzer, it formed a creamy head. Then he added his newly-invented chocolate syrup. This humble drink resembled the pricier ice cream treats and “egg phosphates” enjoyed by the upper classes. He called his new seltzer mixture an “egg cream”, and kept the recipe a secret. As a result, Auster’s store attracted thousands of thirsty poor people, thinking they were getting something luxurious for cheap. The drink became a huge hit. To discover more about this unsung inventor, select Meet Louis Auster below: (there’s another link at the end of this chapter)

Candy stores with soda fountains like Auster’s flourished in every New York borough, especially in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Each was a local hangout, where neighbors would gather and buy newspapers, tobacco, penny candies, and refreshing drinks. Everyone stopped by to gossip and kibbitz with an egg cream in one hand and a salty pretzel stick in the other. No one drank an egg cream alone, sitting down...you would stand and schmooze with others while you enjoyed your chocolatey treat and argued about the Dodgers and Yankees. But don’t argue too long; egg creams lose their foamy heads quickly. Best to down it and get another. And another. And so forth. (Select to enlarge:)

When asked to describe the egg cream, funny guy Mel Brooks replied, “It’s the opposite of circumcision.” In essence, a joyful experience. So let’s make an egg cream – historically, that is – by discovering the incredible stories behind its three ingredients, and how they evolved to become a legendary New York refreshment.

First ingredient: milk

In the Dutch era of the 1600s, almost every family had its own backyard cow, supplying them with fresh milk. As the city began to grow, there was still room for herds of grazing dairy cattle in parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. But as the expanding city approached the 1800s, the situation became problematical. It’s not a pretty story.

Raw milk begins to spoil the moment it leaves the cow. Without pasteurization or refrigeration, milk couldn’t travel very far; cows needed to be kept near the populace. Since little grazing land remained within the city, another food source for the dairy cows was employed, starting in the 1820s. That food source was “slop.”

You read that right. “Slop” or “mash” is a bi-product of brewing beer from grain. By building makeshift cow pens adjacent to their breweries, beer makers could dump their steaming slop into feeding troughs. The cows ate it up. And the brewers no longer had to cart away their mash. The brewery owners made a fortune, and New Yorkers had a convenient source of milk. A win-win!

But not for long. It turns out that mash is not nearly as nutritious as fresh pasture grass. The cows began to lose weight and become sickly. Their bodies ulcerated and their teeth rotted. The unsanitary, overcrowded, foul-smelling pens provided no exercise or air movement. The cows had to stand in their own manure. Those that couldn’t stand anymore had to be winched up for milking.

The product these cows produced was called “swill milk”, a watery, blueish liquid so thin it could not be churned into butter or cheese. It had to be adulterated with chalk, starch or plaster of paris to resemble regular milk. Anyone who drank swill milk suffered from its effects: dysentery, diarrhea, and compromised immunity. Children, of course, had it the worst. One in five of New York’s children were dying in infancy.

4,000 of these diseased distillery cows produced 80 per cent of New York City’s milk. In an attempt to retain the public’s trust, distilleries delivered their swill milk in trucks labeled “Fresh Westchester Milk.” That ruse didn’t help much. The cows had a life expectancy of 12 to 18 months. When they died, their bodies were disassembled and sold to the poor as meat, spreading even more disease. When one distillery burned down, 200 cows perished because they were too weak to flee.

Newspapers ran exposés of the swill milk industry, especially Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. In 1858 it declared war on the “liquid poison,” inspiring widespread public outrage. But exposés and outrage had no effect on the distilleries, which were too ingrained in the corrupt Tammany political system to be shut down. Any distiller charged with selling poisoned milk was found innocent by a judging board of his fellow distillers. And so the swill milk continued to flow, decade after decade.

New Yorkers needed a hero, and finally got one. His name was Nathan Straus, co-owner of Macy’s department store. Straus had heard of Louis Pasteur’s method of purifying milk by heating it to 162 degrees. The local medical communities lagged in accepting the theory, but Straus championed it. In 1898, with the infant mortality rate soaring, Straus committed himself to “Stop the slaughter of babies!” He distributed 34,400 bottles of pasteurized milk from a depot on the East 3rd Street pier. The next summer, he gave out 306,446 bottles of the purified milk. He then formed his own pasteurization plant and opened 18 milk pavilions throughout the city. Straus even sold a home pasteurization kit for $1.50.

It worked. By 1906, eight decades after the advent of swill milk, the infant mortality rate dropped dramatically. And with the invention of refrigerated railroad cars and trucks, fresh pasteurized milk could now be enjoyed by all New Yorkers. Thank you, Nathan Straus!

Second ingredient: seltzer

Carbonated water has occurred naturally throughout history. The ancient Greeks and Romans regularly “took the waters.” It’s created when rain water slowly seeps into vast underground aquifers, becoming naturally filtered. When passing through rocks, it picks up traces of minerals. If this mineral water passes near volcanic aquifers, it absorbs carbon dioxide, the source of “fizz.” Soda water is born.

Where this mineralized water met capitalists, spas began to appear. Attracting invalids as well as the affluent, spas promised cures for a wide variety of ailments, as well as an opportunity to be “seen” in the company of the hoi polloi. One of the most famous spas was Germany’s Niederselters, from which seltzer got its name. Their carbonated mineral water was shipped around the globe in clay jugs (the world’s first seltzer bottles.) In Turkey, it was called “seltz suyu,” in Russia “selterskaja”, in France “eau se seltz.”

One of America’s most prominent spas was (and still is) Saratoga Springs, located 200 miles north of New York City. From its deep limestone beds sprang naturally carbonated mineral water. They began bottling and selling their product in 1820, which became America’s first successful bottled water. They also opened hotels, a race course, an opera house, and many other amusements for their patients/clients.

Many claims were made about the health benefits of imbibing and bathing in mineral water: it supposedly cured biliousness, nervousness, gout, kidney disease, blood disorders, and even gonorrhea. In actuality, its iron content may have helped anemics, its magnesium could aid in constipation, and it relieved “sour stomach” with its bicarbonate of soda (which gives “soda water” its name.) But New York City guests benefited far more from simply drinking the spa’s CLEAN water, instead of their city’s impure water. 

The medical claims of soda water sparked a surge in bottling. One ancient spring in France (which Julius Caesar’s army enjoyed in 58 BCE) was leased to Dr. Louis Perrier in 1898. Little did he know that his water would define the yuppie lifestyle a century later. Likewise, Jabez Ricker bought a Maine resort in 1844 and started delivering jugs of its water via horse-drawn wagons. People enjoyed his “Poland Spring” water because of its plain, de-mineralized flavor. They still do...to the tune of almost a billion dollars annually.

Here’s an idea: instead of bottling soda water at distant springs and shipping it all over the place, wouldn’t it be great if we could just add fizz to any water, anywhere? That flash of inspiration occurred to Englishman Joseph Priestley in 1767. By pouring water from one container into another above a vat of brewing beer, the water became infused with carbon dioxide. Artificial carbonation was born! Unfortunately, Priestly never patented his idea, and a Swiss jeweler named Jacob Schweppe ran with it in 1783. Schweppe’s bubbly waters now sell by the millions worldwide.

Freed from the spa, artificially carbonated water still needed a venue to be served to the masses. Enter New Yorker John Matthews, a.k.a. “The Soda Fountain King.” In the 1830s he invented a new method of carbonating water by producing carbonic acid gas with ground-up marble chips, gathered from the construction site of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mott Street. By the mid 1850s he and his crew of 300 designed and built over 20,000 elaborate soda fountains out of multi-colored marble. Even Matthew’s tomb in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery resembles a giant soda fountain!

Given the so-called medicinal properties of carbonated drinks, the first soda fountains were installed in drug stores, where pharmacists dispensed healing tonics. But this was to change. In the 20th century, drinking spritzy water was all about pleasure. This was purely an American innovation, spearheaded by the Jewish community, who cherished seltzer as a refreshing drink after a heavy meal. Soon seltzer was taken for enjoyment, not as a cure-all. And soda fountains began showing up in candy stores and luncheonettes. With the advent of prohibition in 1920, many bartenders, instead of locking their doors, turned their establishments into soda fountains. The “Big Fizz” was on!

Of course, seltzer lovers wanted to keep a supply at home. As described in Barry Joseph’s effervescent book Seltzertopia, bottling seltzer is a mechanical operation, invented at the turn of the century. It’s a frosty, noisy, soggy job. Filtered water is chilled to 43 degrees, and a “carbonator” mixes it with carbon dioxide. Then a “filler” shoots the seltzer into specialized bottles, fed into the revolving machine one at a time, by hand. These seltzer bottles are a thing of beauty...and highly collectible. They were all made in Czechoslovakia out of thick colored glass, and are still in use more than a century later. Each bottle is topped by a “siphon” (the thing that squirts out the seltzer.) And boy do they squirt. To quote an old Brooklyn expression, “good seltzer should hurt.” (I think the Three Stooges would agree.)

By 1901 there were more than 100 Jewish seltzer manufacturers in New York City. Their 70-pound crates of bottled seltzer would be delivered in and out of trucks, and up and down stairs, by your friendly neighborhood “Seltzer Man,” who many remember fondly. Today there’s only one remaining traditional seltzer plant: the Gomberg Seltzer Works in Brooklyn still makes seltzer one bottle at a time using the old method and machinery, and the beautiful Czech bottles. It’s the newest “old” business around! (To have a real seltzer man deliver some to you, contact The Brooklyn Seltzer Boys at www.brooklynseltzerboys.com.)

Third ingredient: chocolate syrup

Cocoa is another food item that’s been around since New York was the tiny Dutch village of New Amsterdam in the 1600s. There, the small Sephardic Jewish community presided over the cocoa trade, when chocolate and sugar were luxuries. After enslaved people arduously shelled the cacao pods, “chockalet engine houses” ground the cocoa beans into powder, mostly used for hot cocoa.

If you’ve read the accompanying bio of Louis Auster, you’ll know about the amazing chocolate syrup he invented. Unfortunately, he took his secret recipe to the grave. Thankfully, another New Yorker was also experimenting with chocolate.

In 1895, Herman Fox began cooking cocoa, sugar and other ingredients over an open flame in his tenement kitchen in Brownsville, Brooklyn, until he came up with a terrific chocolate syrup. On a trip to Texas, Herman had heard the oilmen use the phrase “You bet it’s good!” He used the phrase for his brand name, and Fox’s U-bet was launched. It originally came with a pump-style top, but today it’s in a plastic squeeze bottle. Purists await Passover to stock up on Fox’s, because the kosher version is made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. Everyone agrees that you simply can not make an authentic egg cream with any other brand. You want your egg cream to taste like Brooklyn NY, not Hershey PA.

Now I’m thirsty! Where can I get a good egg cream?

Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to find a good soda fountain egg cream. Dave’s Corner on Canal Street and Gem Spa in the Village are gone (boo-hoo). But there’s still Ray’s Candy Store on Avenue A, about as old-school as it gets. Excellent versions, prepared properly by expert countermen (I hate calling them “soda jerks”) can be found at Lexington Candy Shop near East 83rd Street, and Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain on Henry Street in Cobble Hill. Junior’s on Flatbush Avenue also offers a serviceable egg cream, but you can’t watch it being made. The exclusive restaurant Eleven Madison Park used to create fancy egg creams from a tableside cart, but has since turned vegan. (Select to enlarge:)

Wanna make your own egg cream? Be my guest! The following “recipe” (more like a method) comes from the Brooklyn Farmacy’s book The Soda Fountain. You’ll want to use fresh cold milk (not swill milk), ice cold seltzer from an unopened bottle (better yet, from a glass siphon bottle delivered by The Seltzer Boys), and Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup. 

“Pour the milk into a chilled egg cream glass and add seltzer until froth comes up to the top of the glass. Pour the syrup into the center of the glass and then gently push the back of a spoon into the center of the drink. Rock the spoon back and forth, keeping most of the action at the bottom of the glass, to incorporate the syrup without wrecking the froth. Serve immediately.”

The experts at Lexington Candy Shop show how it’s done (select to enlarge):

Another New York soda fountain favorite is the lime rickey, made from fresh squeezed lime juice, cherry syrup and seltzer. The drink’s trademark is adding the squeezed lime into the mixture. Since soda fountains make their drinks freshly, a Coke, or a delightful Cherry Coke, will be made from pumped syrup with seltzer added and stirred. You’ll never go back to bottles and cans!

Still thirsty?

New York is the place to be. It’s the soda capital of the world. Founded in 1904, Canada Dry had a huge facility on 38th Street, where they made their popular Ginger Ale. Pepsi, 7-Up and Coca Cola all made sodas in New York (you may remember the famous lighted Pepsi sign...it’s still there in Long Island City!) Today’s bottling plant for Pepsi and Canada Dry is in College Point, Queens. Hoffman sodas were also made in Long Island City.

Yoo-hoo, a popular chocolate drink (without milk or carbonation) was created by Natale Olivieri in Garfield, New Jersey. New Yorkers fondly remember Yankee catcher Yogi Berra spouting his TV pitch, “Me-hee for Yoo-hoo.” City youngsters loved the stuff. 

Brooklyn has a long and illustrious soda history. Dr. Brown’s sodas, including its popular Cel-Ray flavor, were first made in 1886 on Water Street in Manhattan, but soon moved to Greenpoint in Brooklyn. You can’t find a kosher deli which doesn’t serve Dr. Brown’s. The juggernaut H. Kirsch and Company, founded in 1904 in Williamsburg, delivered 5,000 cases a day of their ginger ale, sarsaparilla and celery sodas in trucks topped by giant soda bottles. In 1953, after repeated requests from diabetics, Hyman Kirsch invented the first diet soda, using Sweet & Low (also invented in New York City.) Sales exploded: Kirsh’s No-Cal sodas sold twice as much his regular drinks.

My favorite Brooklyn soda has been created in a barn-like factory in Williamsburg since 1893. Invented by an Italian immigrant named Michael Garavuso, with the help of osteopath Dr. Teresa Cimino, today the fourth generation of the family still produces Manhattan Special Espresso Soda in the same plant (named for their location on Manhattan Avenue, not for that other borough.) The labor-intensive process requires real brewed espresso coffee, just like it was made 129 years ago. When the Starbucks coffee craze hit in the 90’s, Manhattan Special’s sales skyrocketed; it’s now available around the world. But the family tradition is most appreciated by the local people of Williamsburg, who love the factory’s espresso aroma perfuming their neighborhood.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this wild and wacky history of the egg cream and its bubbly relatives. I welcome your comments. If you haven’t yet, it’s time to meet the creator of the egg cream: