The Seltzer Tip For A Perfect Brooklyn-Style Egg Cream

New York City is known for its fair share of comestibles, from bagels to hot dogs to cheap, generously sized pizza slices. When it comes to drinks, few are more iconic than a classic egg cream, a three-ingredient wonder of milk, seltzer, and flavored syrup. In this case, "classic" is synonymous with "Brooklyn style." Chocolate syrup is essential for a traditional Brooklyn-style egg cream — and purists insist that chocolate syrup should be Broolyn's own Fox's U-Bet Chocolate Flavored Syrup and the ingredients mixed in this particular order: milk, then seltzer, and then the syrup. 

Pouring seltzer into the milk the Brooklyn way creates the signature frothy white head that keeps its color even after you pour in the syrup. Pouring the seltzer over a metal spoon can increase the amount and height of the froth; pouring the ingredients into the correct type of glass for an egg cream also increases the drink's fizzy factor.

New York-style egg creams include the Manhattan egg cream, made with vanilla syrup instead of chocolate; and the Bronx egg cream, which has a dark head of foam because the chocolate syrup is mixed into the milk before the seltzer is added. And although there are as many variations on the classic egg creams as there are flavored syrups to choose from, if you want the strongest hit of egg-cream nostalgia, you'll stick with a Brooklyn-style egg cream, made the Brooklyn way.

To master a Brooklyn-style egg cream that measures up to the kind you'd get at an "olde-tyme soda shoppe,"start with the right ingredients. To be fully authentic, you should use whole milk – partly because whole milk is what was available when egg creams were created, and partly because a Brooklyn egg cream's renowned silky-smoothness comes from whole milk. Low- or non-fat milks won't get good and frothy; you're better off using cream or a non-daily-milk alternative. 

The seltzer should be ice-cold, and poured over the back of a metal spoon into the milk. Although any quality chocolate syrup will work, get Fox's U-bet if you can — it's been the gold standard for egg creams since the early 1900s.  The glass you use for an egg cream is more important than you think. Ideally, use a bell-shaped soda fountain glass. That shape "allows the foam to expand and makes it sit proud on top of the chocolate," Peter Freeman told HuffPost in a 2017 interview. Freeman should know — he is the co-owner of Brooklyn Farmacy and Soda Fountain since 2010, which won Best Performance in the Mixing of an Egg Cream kudos from the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum earlier this year. 

You'll want to keep that egg cream as cold as possible while it's being enjoyed, so serve it in a well-chilled glass, with a long metal spoon and a straw. And drink it quickly!

Although the origins of the egg cream are hazy, one popular theory maintains that Brooklyn candy shop owner Louis Auster invented the drink in the early 1900s. The cold, refreshing concoction proved so popular, that Auster was eventually selling thousands in a single day. His shop might be a thing of the past, but there's no shortage of places to get an authentic egg cream in any of the city's five boroughs. 

In addition to Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain in Carroll Gardens, the Lower East Side institution Russ & Daughters has been slinging no-frills egg creams since the 1900s. "We hope that there's nothing that makes ours different," Russ Tupper told The Infatuation, hinting at their version's timelessness. Further uptown, Lexington Candy Shop continues to serve egg creams in a time-capsule luncheonette setting, just like in 1925. 

Meanwhile, other NYC establishments are rethinking the classic egg cream. Take the Gowanus coffee shop Beanmonger Coffee, which uses Topo Chico instead of seltzer sprayed from a siphon bottle, or the Essex Market mini-diner Shopsin's, which offers an egg cream with bright orange syrup. 

When it comes to egg creams, it seems that tradition and innovation get along just fine.