The egg cream. Beyond a doubt, this concoction
of milk, chocolate syrup and seltzer is as Brooklyn as stoopball.
And this summer, in recognition of the unique place egg creams
hold in the hearts of Brooklynites, Borough President Marty Markowitz
is hosting an Egg Cream Extravaganza at noon on Aug. 26 at Borough
Hall Plaza.
The celebration will feature an egg cream-making contest open
to restaurants, ice cream parlors, delis and luncheonettes, plus
plenty of the unofficial drink of Brooklyn and borough trivia
contest prizes for the audience.
"Everybody knows that the best place in the world to get
a great egg cream is in Brooklyn," said Markowitz. "But
it is time to settle, once and for all, who makes the best egg
cream. And I can’t wait to taste every single one of them."
And he’s serious.
"For many years, it’s been dormant," Markowitz said
Wednesday morning in an interview at Junior’s on Flatbush Avenue.
"People 40 and 50 years and up – who’ve been here since
they were a kid -remember them. But there’s a large immigrant
base in Brooklyn, who’ve been arriving for the last 30 years,
and the egg cream is not a drink they have knowledge of. This
contest is a friendly effort to rekindle and share this Brooklyn
tradition, the history.
"They had egg creams in the Bronx, too," said Markowitz,
" but they skimped on the chocolate syrup."
Although the egg cream has certainly flourished in Brooklyn,
no one really knows exactly when or where it was invented.
According to "The Encyclopedia of New York City," edited
by Kenneth Jackson, one account credits the Yiddish actor Boris
Thomashevsky with inventing the drink after sampling chocolat
et creme during a tour of Paris. But another hails candy store
owner Louis Auster as the originator. In fact, it has been said
that Auster sold more than 3,000 egg creams a day from his stores
before they closed in the 1950s.
Whoever invented egg creams, one thing’s for sure: They contain
neither eggs nor cream. "Brooklyn Almanac," a Brooklyn
Educational & Cultural Alliance publication, suggests the
name is derived "from their foamy heads, which resemble
beaten egg whites."
Egg creams became popular in candy stores in the 1920s, 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."
"When I was growing up," said Markowitz, "egg
creams were the drink in Brooklyn. Families would get them at
candy stores and luncheonettes. They were rated by the quality
of their egg creams and lime rickeys."
Willensky calls the candy store "the true anchor of a Brooklyn
neighborhood," and the soda fountain, "what really
made a candy store a candy store."
"Every fountain had three chromium-plated brass spigots,
with black Bakelite handles," writes Willensky. "The
center one dispensed tap water. But the other two ’shpritzed’
cold seltzer, the elixir of Brooklyn’s candy stores."
Mixing seltzer with "syrups displayed in wrinkly glass containers"
made fruit drinks. Even Cokes were mixed by hand from Coca-Cola
Company syrup and seltzer. Cherry Cokes and vanilla Cokes were
"products of the combined imagination of soda jerk and customer,"
Willensky writes. He speculates that egg creams must have been
"a product of that same combined imagination."
Markowitz says that if you went to luncheonettes at Empire Boulevard
and Brooklyn Avenue or Nostrand Avenue and Empire from 1953 to
1956, you may have been sipping on an egg cream made by his own
hand, as he worked as a soda jerk as a kid.
The borough president is putting his first-hand knowledge to
work on Aug. 26 when, as one of the panel of judges, he will
crown the victorious egg cream maker. He did offer this advice
to contestants: "The head is very important. It should be
light and as foamy as possible."
Kevin Rosen, co-owner of Junior’s, says, "The key is the
seltzer. It has to be out of the [pressurized] container."
"And stir at the same time!" said Markowitz.
Egg cream makers can enter one of two contest categories: nouveau
or traditional.
In Brooklyn, the historical popularity of the egg cream was no
doubt enhanced by another borough favorite: Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate
Flavor Syrup.
H. Fox and Company was founded in a Brownsville basement during
the early 1900s, and according to Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy
Jr. in "The Brooklyn Cookbook," "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."
The recipe for U-Bet has remained the same since those early
years: Brooklyn water, sugar, corn sweeteners, cocoa and some
"secret things."
"The Brooklyn Cookbook" also contains an egg cream
recipe that high school math teacher Rod Schweiger got from his
grandparents and uncle, who owned a candy store on West Eighth
Street and Avenue S during the ’40s and ’50s:
"First, you use Fox’s U-Bet. Take a tall Coke-type glass,
from the 1950s. Put in 3/4-inch of syrup, then milk up to one-third
of the glass. Then you add seltzer from a spritz bottle, the
heavy kind with seltzer under pressure. You tilt the glass; if
it’s tilted, the force of the seltzer squirted under the milk
and syrup pushes foam up on the other side. Fill the rest of
the glass with more seltzer, stirring as you spritz. The foam
should be white, and at least 1/2-inch thick. The greatest!"
Markowitz has high hopes that his "Egg Cream Extravaganza"
will return the confection to the menus of diners all over Brooklyn
– and the United States.
"Maybe it will again have a national following," Markowitz
said hopefully. "At the very least the contest will put
a smile on the faces of some folks."
Borough President Marty Markowitz’s
Egg Cream Extravaganza takes place at noon on Aug. 26 at Borough
Hall Plaza, on Court Street at Joralemon Street. All those who
would like to volunteer to be on the judging panel or to obtain
a participation form for their establishment, should call Eileen
Newman at Borough Hall at (718) 802-3806.
