Cooking Jewish: The Classic Egg Cream

An author guest post from Judy Bart Kancigor, author of Cooking Jewish.

My husband Barry’s contributions to “Cooking Jewish” were recipes for his Black & White Malted and his beloved Egg Cream, the New York concoction from his misspent youth, working during the fifties in his father’s candy store on Utica and Church in Brooklyn.

There’s neither egg nor cream in the classic Egg Cream, which gets its name from its head of foam said to resemble beaten egg whites, although one school of thought holds that the original 1890’s version may indeed have used eggs and cream.

My husband, the soda jerk, couldn’t be pinned down to measurements, but in the privacy of our home (and in the interests of science) I held out the old measuring spoon as he displayed his rare talents. He did have strict rules, however, for the preparation of this Big Apple legend. First, the milk must be ice cold, the chocolate syrup must be Fox’s U-Bet (no substitutions) and you’ve got to spritz with seltzer.

When I was growing up, there was always a glass squirt bottle of seltzer on our table, which the seltzer man would deliver in wooden crates. Because the bottles were sealed, it never went flat, unlike the club soda available today.

In the 1967 film The Graduate Mr. Robinson offers one word of advice to Benjamin, revealing a vista of opportunity to the young lad: “Plastics.” The same word sounded the death knell to the glass seltzer bottle. So much so that Molly O’Neill, in discussing seltzer in her New York Cookbook, refers to the years before and after plastic as B.P. and A.P. Enter the screw-top plastic bottle, exit the seltzer man.

My father-in-law’s Brooklyn candy store had a pull-down seltzer dispenser, ideal for making egg creams, as well as other libations – “two pushes” was Barry’s measurement for one serving – or just a Two Cents Plain, a glass of straight cold seltzer.

“The seltzer came out at high pressure when you pushed the lever forward, creating a lot of foam,” my husband, Barry, recalled. “Club soda has nowhere near the fizz. You can use club soda to make an Egg Cream, but it won’t be quite as good.”

Such a simple recipe – so much controversy! Is this the drink you remember?

BARRY KANCIGOR’S NEW YORK EGG CREAM
From Cooking Jewish: 532 Great Recipes from the Rabinowitz Family (Workman Publishing) by Judy Bart Kancigor

2 tablespoons cold whole milk
About 1 cup seltzer
2 generous tablespoons Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup

1.    Pour the milk into a 12-ounce glass.
2.    Spritz with seltzer almost to the top.
3.    Add the syrup, wait a moment for it to fall to the bottom, and then stir with a long spoon. If you get at least an inch of foam, you did it right. Snappy comebacks to know-it-all customers: optional.

Serves 1

Note: Barry’s dad also served a vanilla egg cream made with Fox’s U-Bet vanilla syrup.