An Ode to the Egg Cream, an Iconic New York City Drink (2024)

I’m not a New Yorker by any means. I grew up in a Connecticut suburb an hour north of the city, but as an Ashkenazi Jewish person, I’ve always felt a kinship to the traditional Jewish-American food culture that thrives in New York,especially considering that I could count the number of Jewish families in my hometown on one hand. My family and I would camp out in a booth at Carnegie Deli, eating slices of cheesecake and pastrami sandwiches the size of our faces; We’d wait in line for hours in the rain for a lox platter at Russ & Daughters, and any time we happened upon an old-school ice cream shop or soda fountain, we’d plop down at the counter and order egg creams.

There’s something specifically nostalgic about an egg cream, which, for the uninitiated, is simply a milky, (usually) chocolate soda. It’s refreshingly fizzy but not too sweet, with a foamy head that resembles blowing bubbles into chocolate milk with a straw. Egg creams can be difficult to track down nowadays, but the few places that serve them tend to ooze with childlike joy.

Take Brooklyn Farmacy, an old-school-style soda fountain, restaurant, and ice cream shop situated in a former 1920s apothecary in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood. In addition to enormous sundaes and perhaps the best hot chocolate in the city, co-owners and siblings Peter Freeman and Gia Giasullo jump through hoops to serve flawless, New York-style egg creams.

“[Our recipe] stands on the shoulders of Lower East Side New York Jewish immigrants that invented the egg cream.. and our dad from Queens, who always had the makings for an egg cream in the fridge,” says Giasullo, adding that the first time their dad took the siblings to Manhattan, he brought them to New York City institution Ray’s Candy Store for them a round of egg creams. “He was very much like, ‘This is important. You need to drink this and understand that this is entwined with the history of New York City,’” says Freeman. “Everything from being in the city, being Jewish, being a kid — there’s a generational tie to it because [drinking egg creams] was something he did when he was a kid.” Anyone who drinks egg creams has a deep-rooted history with it, but its actual history is unclear.

The mythical origins of the egg cream

At some time, at some point, the egg cream was invented — it’s just unclear when and where that was. Some believe that it was invented in the 1880s, when a Yiddish actor asked a Lower East Side restaurant to make him a “chocolate et creme,” a drink similar to something he had tasted on a trip to Paris. Others believe that it was invented in the early 1900s by Louis Auster, a Jewish immigrant who opened a candy shop in Brooklyn. Rumor has it, he’d sell 3,000 egg creams a day. Louis’ recipe was top secret — especially how he made (or where he sourced) his chocolate syrup. But once Fox’s U-Bet was invented in Brooklyn in 1903, it quickly became the go-to chocolate syrup for egg cream makers.

What is an egg cream?

An egg cream is essentially a chocolate milk soda. It’s a simple combination of whole milk, chocolate syrup, and seltzer. But what really makes an egg cream an egg cream is that signature froth, which comes from vigorously mixing the ingredients with a metal spoon until a head of tight bubbles rise to the surface. When done correctly, the drink has a magical balance of creaminess and bubbliness — a dreamy mouthfeel that doesn’t last long. Egg creams are meant to be drinken quickly; that doesn’t mean you need to chug, but leave one to sit for more than 10 minutes or so, and the chocolate and soda will separate, which is the main reason why egg creams have been impossible to bottle or can.

How to make an egg cream

Although the recipe is fairly simple, several tricks of the trade can make your egg cream taste like it's straight from the soda fountain. “It starts with ice-cold seltzer,” says Freeman. Brooklyn Farmacy makes their seltzer in-house, but as long as your sparkling water has spent a good amount of time in the refrigerator, you’re golden. High-quality whole milk is essential, and anything thinner like 2% or skim milk won’t whip up properly. Creamy non-dairy milks like oat milk may work, but it’s very possible you’ll hear Louis Auster turning over in his grave if you choose this route.

Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup is still the essential brand for egg creams — no other chocolate syrup is able to dissolve into milk as well (looking at you, Hershey’s). —— Amelia Schwartz

Learn how to make Brooklyn Farmacy's classic egg cream

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup whole milk

• 3/4 cup seltzer

• 2 tablespoons Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup

1. Pour milk into an egg cream glass and add seltzer until froth comes to the top of the glass.

2. Pour the syrup into the center of the glass and then gently push the back of a spoon into the center of the drink. Rock the spoon back and forth, keeping most of the action at the bottom of the glass to incorporate the syrup without wrecking the froth.

3. Serve immediately.