💊 Doctor's Orders 1918

Albumen Beverages

Raw egg white beaten into fruit juice and served cold to convalescents, children and the elderly.

From: The Metropolitan Cook Book
Published: 1918
Yikes Scale: Yikes

Exactly as printed, 1918

cup orange or lemon juice Syrup to taste Beat egg white to a froth, add fruit juice, strain, sweeten. Serve cold.

White 1 egg Syrup for fruit beverages can be made by cooking 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water twelve minutes.

Albumen water is made by adding cup water to the egg white, omitting the fruit juice and syrup. the fruit juice and syrup.

Albumenized milk is made by using cup milk with the egg white. Fruit drinks are made by combining sugar syrup, plain or carbonated water, and fruit juice. 1 tube Peptonizing Powder

The Metropolitan Cook Book, 1918. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Raw shell eggs can carry salmonella both on the shell and inside it, and nothing in any of these variants applies heat. The froth is mechanical, and the fruit acid is nowhere near enough to matter.

The albumenized milk version compounds it, adding untreated raw egg to milk that in this period may well not have been pasteurised either.

Notes from the 21st century

The whole family shares one flaw. Albumen water, albumen beverages, albumenized milk. Same raw white, different carrier, same problem.
Why egg white specifically. It was thought to be the most easily assimilated protein for a patient who could keep nothing else down.
Pasteurised whites are sold in cartons. They froth perfectly well and remove the hazard entirely.

Don't take our word for it. The complete book is online, free and searchable.

Read the original page →

More doctor's orders

See all

Opium, Laudanum (antidotes)

The antidote table's advice for opium and laudanum — emetic draught, vinegar and water, “dashing cold water on chest and face, walking up and down for two or three hours.”

💊 Doctor's Orders Call poison control

The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906

Meat for Invalids

Raw loin beaten in a marble mortar with sweet and bitter almonds and sugar, into a pulp with “a rosy hue, and a very agreeable taste.” Said to keep “even in summer.”

💊 Doctor's Orders Call poison control

The Dixie Cook-Book · 1883

Mercury, Chloride of Calomel

One grain of mercury chloride twice a day as an alterative, four to five as a laxative. The book calls it “a most dangerous medicine” and prints the doses anyway.

💊 Doctor's Orders Call poison control

The 20th Century Home Cook Book · 1906