WEBVTT

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[upbeat guitar music]

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When I was 11 years old,

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I decided to make a documentary.

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My dad was a filmmaker and it was going to be

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our first collaboration.

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We chose as our subject, the chocolate egg cream.

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My father thought the film

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would be a chance to explore deep questions

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of history, memory, and Jewish tradition.

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I thought it would get me

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some delicious chocolate soda drinks.

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We filmed a bunch, but then got distracted

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and put the project on hold.

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About 10 years later, we found the old videotapes

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in the closet.

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[waltz guitar music]

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And now I\'m wondering what this ancient story

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of a forgotten drink, of an immigrant past,

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that I never really knew, and of my 11 year old self

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trying to make sense of it all,

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might tell us about what it means to be a part of history.

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[waltz violin music]

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[fizzing]

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To start our journey, my dad and I visited

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with Andy Coe, a food historian who had written

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the first scholarly article

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about the history of the egg cream.

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The story he told us, began

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on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

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What people found in the egg cream 100 years ago,

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in the tenements districts of New York City

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was a short, blissful moment of relief from the heat,

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and it was also a relief from hunger.

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A hunger for richness, because egg creams,

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if they were anything, were something which

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gave you a taste of richness.

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Chocolate and milk mixed together.

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I hoped Andy could also answer

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a fundamental paradox.

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Why would you call a drink that has neither eggs,

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nor cream, and egg cream?

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Well the origins of the egg cream are shrouded in mystery.

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No one really knows why there\'s no egg

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and there\'s no cream in an egg cream.

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And my theory is, it\'s because it\'s a kind of cheap copy

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of soda fountain drinks in the fancier districts.

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And so, what they were trying to do,

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was give people the sense that they were

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having a fancy, uptown kind of drink,

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for a very downtown kind of price.

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[klezmer music]

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I went searching for people

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who could tell me the secrets

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of how to make an authentic egg cream,

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and I didn\'t have to look too far.

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We\'re going Long Island to film

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my sister\'s friend\'s grandfather

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talking about the egg cream.

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Hello, nice to meet you.

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This is Nora.

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Nice to meet you.

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Nora, I think I remember.

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I\'ve got a handful.

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[laughs]

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In 1937, we had a candy store.

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We used to serve drinks, ice cream.

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They must have liked the egg creams

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because they used to come back for more.

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So, how do you make an egg cream, anyway?

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If you want, I\'ll show you how.

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We take the syrup, chocolate syrup.

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Put it in a glass.

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Take the milk and add to it.

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You put the spoon in the drink.

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Then you put the seltzer in.

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[bottle hisses]

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[seltzer sprays]

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[laughing]

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And sometimes the seltzer explodes.

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Thank you.

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How do you like it?

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Does it taste good?

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It\'s really, really good.

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It\'s tastes really delicious.

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It does?

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I\'m glad you like it.

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Still, this refreshing drink

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made from three simple ingredients

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seem to tap into something deeper in Jewish history.

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Okay, hand her the egg cream.

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So I went to my Hebrew school teacher,

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Jerry, who every winter,

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told a completely preposterous story

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of the origins of the egg cream, that sounded a great deal

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like the Hanukkah story.

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In ancient times,

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this small band of soldiers

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and their leader, the great Judah Maccabee,

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fought one of the first wars

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of one country getting liberated from another country.

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According to Jerry\'s story,

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the Maccabee soldiers, led by Malka, a woman warrior,

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confronted the enemy inspired by a battle cry,

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echoing in ancient metaphor, about how the Torah

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was said to have been written.

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With white fire on black fire.

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And they inched closer and closer.

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She raised her dagger in the air and she shouted out,

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\"White fire on black fire!\"

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And they ran down the hill.

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And a great battle was fought

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and Antiochus\' army was smashed.

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But Malka\'s band stopped.

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She took off her helmet and she took the bucket of milk

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and poured a little bit into the bottom of the helmet.

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And then she held the helmet

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under that bubbling brook coming up from the ground.

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And then she took something that she had made

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from little dark beans, and she poured it

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straight down into the middle.

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And then, she took her dagger and she stirred it around.

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And she raised it up and showed it to her friends

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and she said, \"White fire on black fire!\"

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At that moment, they drank the very first egg cream

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in the history of the world.

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And there you see, white fire on black fire.

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A perfect egg cream.

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I think it\'s the most delicious thing on Earth.

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Fast forward thousands of years,

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to the impoverished neighborhoods of Jewish immigrants

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in the early 20th century.

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It\'s a hot, stifling day on the streets

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of the Lower East Side in Manhattan.

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You need relief.

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So you go into a soda parlor

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and you have to muscle your way up to the counter.

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The soda jerk is rinsing the glasses in dirty water,

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so you order an egg cream, and no matter how dirty

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the glass is, and no matter how uncomfortable you are,

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you take that little moment of drinking the egg cream.

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And that\'s like the little moment which you treasure

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for the rest of the day,

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because that\'s the only moment where you really

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have something good in your life.

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By the time I was a kid,

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it had been decades since Jews were crowded

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into the tenements of the Lower East Side.

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Most have moved to fancier neighborhoods.

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And over the years, the egg cream got more upscale, too.

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[klezmer music]

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We drove to Brooklyn to Tom\'s, and old-fashioned diner,

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known for an especially indulgent version

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of the chocolate egg cream.

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We\'re gonna demonstrate to you,

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how to make the perfect egg cream.

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You start off with ice cold milk.

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Then put a dash of seltzer.

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You put some nice, chocolate syrup.

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U-Bet chocolate syrup.

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And you stir it.

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[spoon clinking]

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A classic egg cream doesn\'t have whipped cream,

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but I make it with whipped cream.

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And that gets on that.

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Mm, that looks good.

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And that looks good, and this makes it look even better.

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And, I top that up with a straw, and you have an egg cream.

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[Anna And Nora] Delicious!

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The best egg cream I\'ve ever had in my life.

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They\'re so good.

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And so fun to watch him make it.

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For what might have been

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the first time ever, my little sister, Anna agreed with me.

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I knew that when I went to Tom\'s there,

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it was the best egg cream I\'ve ever had in my life.

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It had whipped cream, but I think

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that\'s just a great addition,

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that makes it taste really good.

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It actually was the part that made it taste better

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than all the other egg creams that I ever had.

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I was more than fine

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with an egg cream topped with whipped cream

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and extra chocolate syrup.

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But, my dad thought that it was inauthentic

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and insisted that we looked for places

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that better represented the austere egg creams

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of our immigrant past.

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And we found Eisenberg\'s.

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This is Eisenberg\'s Sandwich Shop.

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It\'s been here since 1929.

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Eisenberg\'s was now owned by a young Jewish guy named Josh.

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But he wasn\'t the one who prepared the egg creams.

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Can I have an egg cream, please?

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Okay.

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They were made by Jose,

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who was originally from Mexico.

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I\'ve watched Jose make egg creams

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since I bought this place.

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He\'s gotta do 200 a day and I watch it,

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and then I come over, \'cause they\'re busy

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and I make an egg cream that\'s terrible.

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It\'s three simple ingredients

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and I still can\'t get it right.

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Cold milk, chocolate syrup, and seltzer.

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And you just mix it up and that\'s it.

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Delicious.

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[klezmer music]

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Though we lived in the 21st century

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and far from the squalor of the Lower East Side,

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my parents ordered seltzer through an old-fashioned

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delivery service, run by a man named Walter.

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So naturally, I had to ask Walter\'s advice

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on how to make the perfect egg cream.

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I\'m holding a bottle of Fox U-Bet syrup,

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which most people who make egg creams,

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they swear this is the quintessential ingredient

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in making a good egg cream.

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[seltzer sprays]

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Of course, you need my seltzer to actually

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bring it over the edge and bring it up a notch,

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but you gotta start with this.

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[soft piano music]

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Well, Fox\'s U-Bet was founded

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by a guy named Herman Fox.

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And he was one of the big syrup manufacturers

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who ganged-up to kick these little mom and pop

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syrup operations out of business.

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Fox\'s U-Bet, the essential ingredient

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to any egg cream, has a troubling back story?

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Who knew?

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Maybe the egg cream isn\'t such a happy subject after all.

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So, I turned to my grandpa, who grew up

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in the Jewish ghetto in Boston, to see what he thought.

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As I look back on egg cream,

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I think of Rebbie\'s Grocery Store on Intervale Street.

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And they had a fountain that even at that time,

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was sort of a run-down, decrepit fountain.

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He had a glass that was under the seltzer spigot.

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I think he just rinsed it by what they call, schwenken.

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I think they used the same glass for everybody.

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And don\'t get mad, but as the honest to God\'s truth,

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I\'m not that impressed with egg creams!

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[laughs]

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It turned out that even Andy,

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the historian of egg creams,

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didn\'t really like them that much.

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I don\'t think the egg creams

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are the best soda fountain drink ever invented.

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If it\'s a hot day, and you want something really refreshing,

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I go for a lime rickey.

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Josh and Eisenberg\'s told me

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that he associated the egg creams that he had as a child,

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with the darkest time in Jewish history.

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When I was a kid, I used to go to a guy

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who had a place across the street

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from my apartment building.

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And his name was Yankel.

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And it was a dingy old place,

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but he made a terrific egg cream.

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The fascinating thing about Yankel,

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whatever he was wearing, he would have one sleeve down

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and like this, he\'d have one sleeve up.

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Always rolled up, which would reveal

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his concentration camp number,

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which he wanted people to see.

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And he never changed his expression and he never spoke.

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And that\'s my memory of egg creams.

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Egg creams have a certain sadness to them.

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And I think it\'s because people realize in drinking them,

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people of a certain age, who were born

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in a certain neighborhood, realize

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that they\'ve lost something.

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And they can remember it for the few moments

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in which they\'re downing an egg cream,

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but they never can gain it back.

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[violin music]

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The egg cream\'s power to people,

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I began to realize, was not in its flavor,

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but in what it evoked.

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A hazy memory of simpler times.

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[klezmer music]

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We talked to Ron and John, who used to live in New York,

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and now live in Atlanta.

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You know what I miss about New York, John?

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What do you miss?

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Bagels?
Egg creams.

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Oh! [laughs]

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Well, the bagels too, \'cause of the water.

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But, the egg creams...

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Oh, egg creams.

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I remember being four years old and my brothers

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were much older than me and they used to make egg creams.

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And I would hear the spoon,

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[imitating spoon clinking the glass]

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I would be like, \"Oh, please make me one!\"

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Oh, God!

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I would love an egg cream right now.

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He makes \'em good.

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I can make \'em, but why, if Ron\'s gonna make it?

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The essential makings of an egg cream.

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Keep these basic three ingredients.

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We don\'t have U-Bet\'s, but we\'re gonna go with

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Hershey\'s here, then we add our milk,

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one-third half the way up the cup.

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Stir.

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You wanna get all the chocolate off the bottom.

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Make sure it\'s evenly distributed.

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And seltzer out of this beautiful machine over here.

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For me, it\'s the magic moment.

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Here we go.

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Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir, stir.

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We got our lovely froth.

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Look at that.

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Like an egg.

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Mm.

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Delicious.

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Brings back my childhood.

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Ah.

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[waltz guitar music]

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As I think back on it,

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as a young kid, I felt like egg creams connected me

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to a past I may not have known or understood,

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but that somehow resonated within me

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as a part of my heritage.

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So, we served them at my bat mitzvah.

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Hi, can I have an egg cream?

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Yeah, my pleasure.

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White fire on black fire.

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[waltz guitar music]

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The more I think about the egg cream now,

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the more it feels like a midrash, a wise commentary

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that helps explain difficult parts of Jewish scripture.

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00:13:30.590 --> 00:13:33.420
Was the egg cream a story that immigrant Jews in America

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told themselves to make sense of their poverty?

335
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A made-up potion with no eggs or cream,

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that gave them a mythology to live by?

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I still don\'t fully know what it all means,

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but I do know that there\'s a lot to be learned

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from three simple ingredients

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and thousands of years of history.

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[waltz music ends]

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Oh, my God!

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Look at that!

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[laughing]

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[\"Egg Cream\" by Lou Reed]

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♪ When I was a young man ♪

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♪ No bigger than this ♪

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♪ A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed ♪

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♪ Some U-Bet\'s Chocolate Syrup ♪

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♪ Seltzer water mixed with milk ♪

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♪ You stir it up into a heady fro ♪

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♪ Tasted just like silk ♪

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♪ You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream ♪

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[song ends]

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[klezmer music]