My dad, who grew up in Brooklyn, used to buy an egg cream for five cents at the local candy store. He laughed when I described to him what I imagined egg cream would be: a chocolate egg filled with cream. I was somewhat embarrassed to learn that unlike eggnog, egg cream contains no eggs and no cream. Who would have figured it was just a simple mixture of milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup? And who could have conceived that these three ingredients would combine to make such a dream team?

Ingredients

½ cup whole milk

3 tablespoons chocolate syrup

one cup seltzer

The origin of egg cream remains in dispute. One popular tale credits Louis Auster, a Brooklyn candy store owner, as its inventor. In any case, the egg cream proved to be the true (and affordable) variation of the classic milkshake—a riff on its egg-and-cream shake predecessor, the recipe which called for the pricey ingredients of egg and cream. Thus the poor man’s milkshake was born.

Pour the milk into a tall soda glass. Add the seltzer. A layer of white foam should form on the top. Carefully lower the chocolate syrup—spoon by spoon—into the glass and deposit it at the bottom. Gently stir the chocolate sediment so that the white foam at the top is not disrupted. Drink immediately.