Help me settle a bet with my wife. She claims that you were at one time (still?) able to order an Orange Julius with a raw egg blended into it. I say there is no way any restaurant chain would open itself to that kind of liability.
So is there anyone with knowledge of whether or not this is true? Thanks.
In my area, the Orange Julius franchise used to offer the raw egg option, but they stopped doing so in the 1980s.
You can still get them to put powdered egg whites in your Julius, but it isn’t the same.
Wow, I didn’t know Orange Julius still existed! The last one I ever saw closed in the early '90’s.
–Cliffy
My town has two Orange Juliuses (Julii?), both in shopping malls. The menu has expanded over the years, but you can still get the original flavor (minus the raw egg, of course).
No restaurants offer food with raw egg in it? Are caosar salads always served with coddled eggs now? What about steak tartare? Isn’t the actual risk from eggs rather low?
(Why would you want that anyway?)
I can verify that my father did, indeed, order and receive raw egg in his Orange Julius drink on a regular basis in the 1970’s in Los Angeles. :pukie:
Didn’t we cover this already? Or is it in my trust copy of “Big book of Big Secrets” by Wm. Poundstone?
Raw, unpasteurized eggs, as with any food, are only unsafe to eat if the eggs themselves are contaminated, and not all eggs are. (IIRC only the shell is contaminated, but it’s easy to transfer any pathogens into the contents of the eggs when they’re cracked.) Pasteurized eggs are heated to a sufficiently high temperature to destroy salmonella, and these eggs are safe to eat raw. They have a longer shelf life and a lower risk of liability, so pasteurized eggs (and liquid egg products) are widely used even if they aren’t meant to be eaten raw.
The whole point of adding a raw egg to a drink is to increase its protein content, right? So it’s not surprising that Orange Julius wouldn’t do this anymore, for a few reasons. First, egg yolks contain fat and cholesterol, while egg whites are mostly protein and water. Most people who want a high-protein drink would rather have just the egg white than a whole raw egg. (Powdered egg white is probably cheaper than liquid egg white.) Powdered whole eggs are also available; the fact that they chose egg whites may mean that concerns over fat and cholesterol were a factor in deciding what to use.
Second, while eggs were an excellent source of protein by 1980’s standards, there are better sources now. The sort of person that wanted a raw egg mixed in with a drink in the 80s would now be more likely to want a scoop of whey protein (which is easier to absorb and has a better amino acid profile) – does Orange Julius offer that?
Anyway, it’s not purely about liability; it’s also about demand. If enough people still wanted whole eggs, they could use pasteurized eggs. I seem to remember seeing somewhere (or maybe the person at Orange Julius told me) that there’s egg white in the mix they use to make the drinks.
Meeko: That might have been where I read about the egg white, but I think I asked someone at Orange Julius what was in the powder and they told me. They must have been disgruntled, or maybe they thought I could possibly be allergic to eggs.
From Top Secret Recipes:
*1 1/4 cups orange juice
1 cup water
3 tablespoons egg white or egg substitute
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups ice
*
Of course, this will be nothing like the great refreshing taste of a real Orange Julius® blended drink made from secret proprietary ingredients. But it looks like the main ‘secret ingredient’ is egg white, so adding more egg would mean a juliusier Orange Julius, kind of like a Big Mac with extra Thousand Isla–er, secret sauce.
Meeko I performed a search before posting the question. If you can find an identical thread post it here.
Thanks to those who provided an actual answer.
Or to affect the flavor.
Yeah, it tastes much better with the egg – my first response was yuck, but if you taste it, I think you will agree.
They could always use raw, pastuerised eggs.
Yes, I remember seeing the sign advertising the fact that they would add the raw egg to your Julius when I was a kid in the early '80’s. Being a kid, I remember thinking how gross that would be.
Raw eggs in shakes/smoothies were kind of a “health food” thing back then. As a previous poster metioned, today people use protein powder for the same purpose.
It used to be considered safe to eat raw, unpasteurized eggs…so Orange Julius was not opening itself up to lawsuits back then. However, the incidence of salmonella in eggs today (and the awareness of such) probably caused Orange Julius to take the raw eggs off the menu.
My mom had an old Betty Crocker cookbook from the 1960’s which had a recipe for eggnog which was essentially raw eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla extract whirled together in a blender. My sister and I made it one day after school…it was really good! My mother was horrified when she came home to find that we were eating raw eggs, but we didn’t get sick, and we’re both still alive. (I bet if people were getting sick from raw eggs in the '60’s, Betty would not have published that recipe.) I’m sure that raw egg in a Julius would be pretty good, too…but probably not good enough to risk food poisoning.
Yes, back in the Dark Ages of my youth, people drove around without seatbelts, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and did all sorts of other things now considered to mean almost certain death.
Add one more vote towards the existence of eggs in Orange Juliuses in the 80s. I ordered it as a child.
I was a child and so the possibility that egg for protein wasn’t something I would have been thinking of. My thinking on the situation at the time was simply that /w egg was tastier and OJ knew this, but /w egg is gross so they offered the option not to have. Dunno which is true. Personally I had tried OJes and they were darn good, so I trusted them enough to go for the recommended /w egg despite the grossness factor. Similarly, I will try weird ingredients at restaruants I know to make tasty stuff but nowhere else.
Well I thank everyone for their responses, this means that I have to give my wife a 1/2 hour backrub. I was really looking forward to being on the receiving end of a backrub, but I will honor my bet.
I used to get the egg option all the time. It made for a much smoother and foamier OJ, and gave it a nice flavor also.
I think there was a bit of a Rocky fad going at the time, when a man’s man morning drink was cracking six raw eggs in a glass.
Did Orange Julius crack the eggs on demand? Or did it keep a whole lot of cracked eggs in a container for on-demand use? If the former, there’s almost zero risk of dangerous levels of salmonella (but yes, there’s a possibility of ingesting some). If the latter, then that’s where the real salmonella problem exists.
I can think of one close to you, in Arundel Mills.