[Sca-cooks] seltzer/club soda

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach A F Murphy:
>There isn't a lot of milk, usually. More soda like.

Also, the syrup doesn't get mixed completely into the milk, of which,
as you say, there isn't much. I'd describe it as a rich chocolate
soda with a foam on top similar to that on cappucino, but also with a
slight carbonated bite.

>Club soda has minerals and salt added, for flavor. People on low sodium
>diets are told to avoid it. Seltzer is just the charged water. Well, OK,
>now there are all kinds of flavored seltzers... but this is the real stuff.

Both seltzer and club soda are industrially-produced imitations of
different types of naturally-carbonated spring waters. The spring
water club soda imitates is high in minerals (including sodium),
while the real Niederseltnerswasser is low. The flavor difference is,
well, rather like the difference between [decent] tap water and Evian.

>Stefan li Rous wrote:
>
>>So, fizzy chocolate milk? I don't know....

An egg cream has a niche all its own, and is very hard to compare,
fairly, to anything but another egg cream. Fizzy chocolate milk would
only be compared to the very worst egg creams, or as made by someone
who knew the ingredients, but not the technique, or had read about
them but never experienced one. Someone... well... like you, Stefan
;-).

Here's how I was taught to make an egg cream, straight from a
grouchy, semi-toothless, 400-lb old geezer behind a luncheonette
counter in Bayside, Queens, so obviously this is pretty close to the
Real Deal. Arthur's egg creams were better than those at Dave's
Luncheonette on Canal Street and Broadway (alleged by some to have
either the original, echt egg creams and/or the best in New York;
both claims were false), and I never had the chance to try the ones
at (what was the name, Avraham?) that little place on, I think, the
Bowery (another location said to be the original home of The Brown
Nectar):

You need:

Chocolate syrup - Fox's U-Bet preferred, but anything that tastes
like actual chocolate will do, I guess

Seltzer - cold; a Three-Stooges-style squirty charger is best, but
you can use any seltzer

Milk - cold, real, and fresh - No friggin' Parmalat, no
UHT-processed, no skim or other low-fat pseudo-milk... your basic 4%

In a tall, slim tumbler like an iced tea glass or a plain water
tumbler, add your syrup, about as much as you'd add to make an
equivalent glass of chocolate milk: around 4 Tbs?

Add milk, 2 to 3 ounces, maximum. DO NOT STIR YET.

Top off glass with seltzer. Stir, carefully, with a long utensil like
a drink stirrer or an iced tea spoon. If you're a wuss you might use
an immersion blender or one of those shake mixers, but a long-handled
spoon works just fine.  The object is to mix the lower layers without
disturbing the foamy head on top any more than is absolutely
necessary, and this takes some practice to get it right.

A good egg cream made by a real pro is identified by (obviously)
tasting it, and by noting that the foamy head on top is nearly pure
white. If the foam is brown, it was stirred improperly, and you get
less foam that way anyway. The gustatorial glory of the egg cream
lies in the contrast between the carbonated bite of the relatively
unflavored, unsweetened foam (barbarians use straws and miss this)
and the darker layer below.

I have heard whispered, near-mythical rumors of non-chocolate egg
creams. Actually, vanilla egg creams are pretty common, and I assume
strawberry ones are perfectly doable, but don't recall ever actually
seeing one.

Adamantius