History of New York Egg Cream

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History Of The New York Egg Cream

This old-time New York thirst-quencher is ...

This old-time New York thirst-quencher is sweet and full of fizz. Despite its name, the egg cream contains neither eggs nor cream.

In the beginning, it was a soda produced almost exclusively in New York (particularly Brooklyn). the basic ingredients are milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup. It is traditionally made in a small Coke-style glass.

True New Yorkers insist that it is not a classic egg cream without Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup. It is perfectly proper to gulp down an egg cream. In fact, egg cream will lose its head and become flat if it is not enjoyed immediately.

For many years, the egg cream remained a product sold only through New York soda fountains because bottled versions were impossible to make. The cream, chocolate, and soda had a tendency to separate and to go bad after a couple days at best, and efforts to pasteurize or preserve the product ruined the taste. Today, Egg Cream drinks are being bottled by a few small companies.

Egg creams became so popular that Elliot Willensky, in When Brooklyn Was the World: 1920-1957," wrote "a candy store minus an egg cream, in Brooklyn at least, was as difficult to conceive of as the Earth without gravity."


There are several stories or legends on the Egg Cream:

1880s - One version or legend says that it began in 1880s on the Lower East Side of New York with the teenage Yiddish-theatre star Boris Thomashevsky (1868-1939), who brought the first Yiddish play to New York from London and was also a founding member and pioneer of the Yiddish theater in America. After tasting a similar drink, called a drink called chocolate et creme, in Paris, France, he asked to have one made in New York.

1890 - The Egg Cream was created in 1890 by a Jewish candy shop owner, Louis Auster, in Brooklyn, New York. It is reported that he sold 3,000 Egg Creams a day until the day he closed. According to legend, Mr. Auster was approached by a national ice cream chain, and they offered to buy the rights to the Egg Cream for a fairly small sum. When Mr. Auster turned them down, one of the executives called him by a racial slur, and Mr. Auster vowed to take the Egg Cream formula to his grave. He died without revealing his original recipe and the origin of the name, and to this day his family has keep the secret.

Mr. Auster was Jewish, as were most of his customers at the time the Egg Cream was invented. It is possible the Egg Cream is actually a Yiddish name or phrase that has been Americanized.

1900's - In the early 1900s, Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Syrup was created. According to the cookbook called The Brooklyn Cookbook, by Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy Jr., "You absolutely cannot make an egg cream without Fox's U-Bet." The cookbook refers to Fox's grandson, David, for the story of the syrup's name:

"The name 'U-Bet' dates from the late-'20s, when Fox's grandfather got wildcatting fever and headed to Texas to drill for oil. 'You bet' was a friendly term the oilmen used. His oil venture a failure, he returned to the old firm, changing Fox's Chocolate Syrup to Fox's U-Bet. He said, 'I came back broke but with a good name for the syrup,' his grandson relates."

1920 - Moisha Zambrowsky, owner of Moisha's Luncheonette on the Lower East Side of Manhattan claimed origination of an egg cream formula and dispensed the product from his fountain. Fountain dispensed egg creams over the next four or five decades became the premiere product served throughout the New York area.