My favorite egg cream by far comes from Brooklyn Farmacy, a new old-style soda fountain in a beautifully restored 1920s pharmacy in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Their 2014 recipe book The Soda Fountain details how you can make your own coffee, maple, blueberry, or orange egg cream.

But, for my money, I’d travel any day to drink one of their traditional Brooklyn egg creams. While many egg cream aficionados offer their own recipe for creating egg creams, their book takes it one step further—they detail how to perform what some call the art of the egg cream:

Pour the milk into an egg cream glass and add seltzer until
froth comes up to the top of the glass. Pour the syrup into
the center of the glass and then gently push the back of a
spoon into the center of the drink. Rock the spoon back
and forth, keeping most of the action at the bottom of the
glass, to incorporate the syrup without wrecking the froth.
Serve immediately.

Many a flat egg cream could be saved by practicing these
techniques.