Egg Cream
Chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer sprayed in hard enough to foam, containing neither egg nor cream.
CC BY 2.0 · Cropped, white-balanced, graded and re-encoded to WebP by eXir.
A chocolate egg cream in a plain glass, with a thick pale foam head and a straw
Serving
Drink spec, per drink
Every figure above is per drink and does not move with the count, which is what makes the two service modes comparable. Sugar per litre, strength and standard drinks stay in the units their own authorities publish, because they are figures for comparing rather than for pouring.
Diet and allergen labels are computed from the ingredients listed on this page and nothing else. They cannot account for cross-contamination or for the particular product you buy, and they are not medical or safety guidance.
Ingredients
25 ml chocolate syrup
60 ml whole milk
180 ml soda water
- 25 ml chocolate syrup
- 60 ml whole milk
- 180 ml soda water
Glass
Vessel
265 ml of liquid, served without ice, inside the 400 ml the glass holds. The build fails if a recipe ever exceeds its stated vessel.
A batch needs a vessel that closes and fits a fridge shelf.
Method
3 steps · 40sPour the 25 ml chocolate syrup into the bottom of a tall glass.
Add the 60 ml whole milk, then spray in the 180 ml soda water hard and fast, straight down the centre of the glass, for 15s.
The seltzer is sprayed in hard, straight down the middle of the glass, rather than poured gently down the side; the force is what beats the milk and syrup into the tight white foam a proper egg cream is judged by.
Stir just enough to lift the syrup up from the bottom, leaving a tight white foam on top.
Common pitfallStirring the syrup and milk together before the seltzer goes in flattens the fizz that raises the foam. The syrup is meant to still be mostly settled at the bottom when the seltzer hits it.
Keeping and make-ahead
Built to order. The foam is raised by the force of pouring the seltzer in, and it collapses within a minute of standing.
About
Chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer sprayed together on the Lower East Side, named for two ingredients it has never actually contained.
Neither of the two competing origin stories fully explains the drink's name, which is the one detail every account agrees is unresolved. One version credits Louis Auster, a candy store owner on the Lower East Side, with inventing the drink around 1890 and guarding his recipe closely enough that its exact syrup was never confirmed in his lifetime 1. The other credits the Yiddish theatre star Boris Thomashevsky, who is said to have asked a soda fountain for a "chocolat et crème" he remembered from Paris in the 1880s, though neither source can explain how that request turned into the drink or the name actually used today 2.
What both accounts agree on is the ingredients, which is also the drink's best-known joke: an egg cream contains no egg and no cream, only milk, chocolate syrup and seltzer, mixed hard enough to raise a foamy head that one theory holds is the real source of the name 2. The syrup most associated with an authentic version is Fox's U-Bet, made from 1903 by the Brooklyn manufacturer Herman Fox, reportedly starting out of his own tenement home 2. That syrup is the reference bottle a recipe calling simply for "chocolate syrup" is usually assumed against, though any pourable chocolate syrup will make a recognisable version.
The drink's home in Jewish immigrant neighbourhoods was not incidental. Seltzer itself arrived in the United States largely through German Jewish bottlers working from naturally carbonated springs, and the practice carried into New York's Jewish enclaves before the egg cream existed to use it 2. The drink's popularity has stayed tied to that same geography ever since, more associated with a handful of Lower East Side and Brooklyn counters than with any national soda-fountain chain.
- 1History of the Egg Cream Sodaimbibemagazine.com
- 2The History Of NYC's Whimsical Egg Cream Sodachowhound.com