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An egg cream is a classic New York City beverage consisting of chocolate syrup (Almost always Fox's U-bet chocolate syrup in New York), milk, and seltzer (soda water), probably dating from the late 19th century, and is especially associated with Brooklyn, home of its inventor, candy shop owner Louis Auster. It contains neither eggs nor cream.
The origin of the name "egg cream" is constantly debated. Stanley Auster, the grandson of the inventor, has been quoted as saying that the origins of the name are lost in time. One commonly accepted origin is that Egg is a corruption of the Yiddish word echt ("genuine"), and this was a "good cream". It may also have been called an "Egg Cream" because in the late 1800s there were already many chocolate fountain/dessert drinks using actual eggs (e.g. 'Egg Brin'), and Auster wanted to capitalize on the name.
Though almost universally made with chocolate syrup, they were sometimes requested with other flavors, especially vanilla or strawberry.
The egg cream is almost exclusively a fountain drink; although there have been several attempts to bottle it none have been wholly successful, as its fresh taste and characteristic head requires mixing of the ingredients just before drinking. The drink could be described as a "poor man's ice cream soda," as it has a similar overall flavor, but traditionally sold for only a slight premium over an ordinary fountain soda.
According to the Fox's U-bet chocolate syrup website, the recipe for "the original Brooklyn Egg-Cream" is:
- Take a tall, chilled, straight-sided, 8oz. glass
- Spoon 1 inch of U-bet Chocolate syrup into glass
- Add 1 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.
In Popular Culture
Lou Reed, in his song "Egg Cream" from the album Set the Twilight Reeling, describes it thus:
- "When I was a young man—no bigger than this
- A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed
- Some U-Bet's Chocolate Syrup, seltzer water mixed with milk
- Stir it up into a heady fro—tasted just like silk
- You scream, I steam, We all want Egg Cream"
In Louise Fitzhugh's book Harriet the Spy, an egg cream is Harriet's favorite drink, and she often had one while reviewing her case files in a diner.
In the episode "The Midterms", of the television show The West Wing, President Bartlet comments, "I'm drinking the most fantastic thing I've ever tasted in my life! Chocolate syrup, cold milk, and seltzer. I know it sounds terrible, but trust me, I don't know where this has been all my life!" Toby Ziegler responds, "It's called an egg cream, Mr. President; we invented it in Brooklyn."
On the Nickelodeon cartoon Hey Arnold!, Arnold saves the life of a millionaire who loves egg cream so much that he has an egg cream dispensing robot named Mr. Egg Cream.
In the movie "Squirm", shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the main character is a young guy from New York who goes down South to visit his girlfriend. He goes into a diner and orders an egg cream, and pisses off the lady at the counter, the sheriff, and all the locals for being from somewhere besides the South. He then finds a worm in his egg cream and spills it, further annoying everybody, because he's from the North, and not the South.
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Soft drinks | Milk | American cuisine | New York City cuisine
"Egg cream"