The Vintage Reader

As a child, I was obsessed with Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh. Harriet, in case you haven't read the book, is a young girl who runs around with a notebook spying on people. She hides in dumbwaiters, she sits in trees, she scales roofs and peeks in windows to watch her neighbors secretly eating cat food and receiving odd statuary. When her notebook is confiscated and passed around, she loses her best friends because of some of the things she's written about them, and then she also loses her nanny, who gets married.

Much of Harriet's life seemed exotic and desirable to me. She had all of New York to run around in, apparently with no adult supervision. People took her to the drug store to get egg creams. And that's what this post is actually about: the egg cream.

I always pictured an egg cream as a frothy off-white concoction, served in a glass with whipped cream and a cherry on top. Boy, was I wrong. They apparently consist of milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup. That sounds horrible, but given Harriet's love of tomato sandwiches (which also sound horrible), I don't suppose I should have expected her to have a discriminating palate.

Anyway, here's everything I needed to know about egg creams: Egg Cream, History of New York Egg Cream, Egg Cream Recipe.