Where Did All the Egg Cream Sodas Go?
Egg cream sodas were once the effervescent star of New York’s soda fountain scene. Today, the drink is little more than a nostalgic novelty, served up occasionally at old school spots and retro-themed bars intent on keeping the classic alive. So what happened to this once-beloved treat?
At the beginning of the 20th century, soda fountains were a common sight and popular meeting place in New York City. The name described both the equipment — a tap that dispensed carbonated soda water — and the business, which often meant a place that served food along with the bubbly drinks. When they first gained popularity in the mid-1800s, soda fountain machines were primarily used in drug stores. Pharmacists mixed seltzer, seen then as a medicinal drink, with potent or bitter-tasting drugs to make them more palatable.
In the early 1900s, the fountains and the “soda jerks” who worked them moved on from serving just prescription drinks to a more tempting variety of sweets. As fountains proliferated in candy stores, ice cream parlors, luncheonettes, and department stores, carbonated water was mixed with fruit syrup, used to make ice cream floats, and featured as one of just three ingredients in an iconic New York City drink from the era: the egg cream soda.
Contrary to its name, an egg cream contained neither eggs nor cream. (No one is exactly sure where the name came from, though there are certainly lots of theories.) The soda was a mixture of chilled whole milk, seltzer water, and chocolate syrup (preferably Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup), whipped together to create a creamy, frothy, fizzy drink. It was one of the best-known drinks in the city at the time, but exactly how and when it made its way to New York soda fountains is the subject of competing theories. One of the most popular stories suggests that Louis Auster first whipped it up at his Lower East Side candy store around 1890. Auster made his own chocolate syrup and never revealed his recipe. Another theory involves the Ukrainian-born Yiddish theater star Boris Tomashevsky. It’s said that, while in New York in the 1880s, he may have asked a soda jerk to make a drink he had enjoyed in Paris — a “chocolat et creme.” Yet another story, detailed in New York Magazine in 1971, claims the egg cream wasn’t actually invented until the 1920s, and was the property of the uncle of sociologist Daniel Bell — Uncle Hymie’s recipe, however, did involve an egg.
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By the 1920s, it’s estimated there were about 125,000 soda fountains serving up fizzy concoctions across the U.S. Egg creams were a defining staple of this era, especially in New York City — Louis Aster’s alone was so popular that he’s said to have sold up to 3,000 of them a day. But the egg cream’s popularity waned with the decline of soda fountain culture. By the 1950s, mass-marketed bottled and canned sodas had become the norm. Increasing car ownership and postwar suburbanization prioritized roadside eateries, and as independent drug stores were overshadowed by big chain stores, soda fountains became too costly to install and maintain. By the 1970s, soda fountain culture was all but obsolete, and so was the egg cream.
The egg cream remained a symbol of nostalgia for many New Yorkers and classic Americana aficionados for years after its demise. In 1991, the drink appeared in an episode of Seinfeld. Sesame Street boasted about Mr. Hooper’s egg cream recipe in episodes in 1978 and 1984. In 1996, New York music legend Lou Reed even titled a song “Egg Cream” on his album Set the Twilight Reeling. Traditional soda fountains have become a rarity, but in New York City, older establishments such as Ray’s Candy Store in Manhattan and the famed Jewish deli Russ & Daughters still serve classic egg creams. Modern interpretations have also popped up, as nostalgic eateries such as the Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain, built in an original 1920s apothecary, have put the quintessential New York beverage front and center.
