One of the most iconic beverages in New York City is called an Egg Cream. Yes, you heard that right. It’s made of raw eggs and cream mixed together.
Just Kidding.
But I did tell Darren that before he tried one on our last trip.
An Egg Cream, which contains neither eggs, nor cream is actually a delightful mix of chocolate syrup (Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup, specifically), seltzer water, and milk. And it’s at its fizzy best right after it’s made.
According to America’s Test Kitchen, “egg creams reached peak popularity in the early 1900s, particularly in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan.”
The origin story of the name “egg cream” is murky, they say. There are (at least!) four versions:
1. It was inspired by the foam at the top of the drink, which resembles whipped egg whites.
2. A man who had returned from France, where he recently enjoyed a drink called ‘chocolat et crème,’ ordered one at a New York soda fountain. He explained the recipe to the soda jerk working behind the counter who misheard the name of the drink as ‘chocolate egg cream.’
3. Around the turn of the 20th century, many soda fountain drinks did feature eggs or egg whites. So the original egg cream did contain eggs, but they were removed during the Great Depression to make the drink more affordable.
4. Egg creams were popular among the large Jewish American populations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. So ‘egg cream’ is an Americanization of ‘echt keem,’ Yiddish for ‘pure sweetness.’
After hunting for an answer to why this drink with no eggs and no cream is called an egg cream, I was given a huge handful of uncertainty.
No one knows.
My brain does not like that. Not one bit.
My brain, like many of yours, appreciates certainty. We humans, as it turns out, are remarkably uncomfortable with unanswered questions.
And because of that, four things often occur:
- We clutch onto shaky explanations rather than admit we don’t know.
- We rush to conclusions about our relationships, our futures, our worth, and other people’s motives.
- We exhaust ourselves trying to eliminate uncertainty.
- We forget that some questions take time, and some (like how an egg cream got its name) may never have complete answers.
There is a cost to needing an answer and there is, inversely, an immense benefit in building up our tolerance for uncertainty.
Practice with me:
“I don’t know why she said that.”
“I don’t know how this will turn out.”
“I don’t know what they’ve decided about me.”
“I don’t know what’s around the corner.”
“I don’t know what this means yet.”
Thankfully, life doesn’t always require every mystery to be solved before we can enjoy it.
So drink the egg cream.
And thank me later.
I can’t wait to hear about what you’re willing to leave unanswered – and if you need help building your tolerance for uncertainty, I’d love to help.
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PS If you liked this post – or any others, I’d love you to pass me and my work on to a friend. They can find out much more about me here if they’re interested!
