egg cream

Various theories exist, since the drink contains neither eggs nor cream. See Egg cream in Wikipedia.

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egg cream (countable and uncountable, plural egg creams)

1. (US, especially New York City) A drink consisting of milk and soda water with vanilla or chocolate syrup.
   • 2022, Robert Kanigel, Young Man, Muddled, Bancroft Press, →ISBN, page 16:

     One time soon after I got to town [Baltimore, in 1966], I walked into a luncheonette on Charles Street, its long soda fountain retreating back from the street, and asked for an egg cream. The young woman behind the counter stood there, looking at me blankly. “A what?” she asked. “An egg cream,” I said. “What’s that?” she asked again. An egg cream contains no egg and no cream, but boasts a milky head, punctured by a brown dot of chocolate syrup, stirred and frothed up with seltzer—a chocolate ice cream soda without the ice cream. The young Baltimore woman behind the counter deserved an explanation something like that. But my New York provincialism ran so deep I couldn’t supply one. I literally didn’t understand her question: How could you ask what an egg cream was? An egg cream was an egg cream, period, staff of life to every New Yorker of my generation, available at any corner candy store. Alerted to an awkward scene in the making, someone else behind the counter stepped in to help. But she didn’t know what I was talking about either. I tried to explain, failed, and—this deficit of Baltimore life simply beyond my comprehension—just left. But soon, for all my bludgeon-headed obtuseness, and all of Baltimore’s quaint limitations, I fell into the life of the city.