An Egg Cream Exception

I really enjoyed Leilah Bernstein’s piece on egg creams (“A Spritz in Time,” June 17), but I take exception to the idea that there are two schools of egg cream-making. I’ve never met anyone who drizzles the chocolate syrup in after spritzing.

This must be a new thing and leads me to point out an important omission in the recipe. Ms. Bernstein should have indicated that Fox’s U-Bet is the only acceptable chocolate syrup to use. No others will do because their consistency is too thick to allow a good head to form at the surface (which, if you use a different syrup, explains this new school of adding the syrup after the spritz). Happily, Fox’s U-Bet is available here in Los Angeles. I saw a stack of jars at the Mayfair in Silver Lake, which surprised me because, being a bit thin in the consistency department and rather too artificial tasting, it’s really only useful for egg creams.

Let’s hope that egg creams won’t become the bagels of the ‘90s, so mainstreamed as to have lost all their idiosyncratic characteristics except for the hole.

MICHAEL ROBERTS

Los Angeles