Malt

When a milk shake made with ice cream, syrup, and milk isn’t rich enough, the next step is to make it a malt. Short for malted milk shake, malts first were concocted at Walgreen’s Drug Store in Chicago in 1922. At the time, malted milk – made by adding a powder of malted barley and wheat flour to milk and flavored syrup – already was popular as a health-food drink for children and others who needed to gain weight. Soda jerk Ivar “Pop” Coulson figured out a way to make it even more fattening by adding ice cream. The malt was born and became such an emblem of soda fountain joy that the term malt shop has come to be a descriptor for any confectionery where ice cream drinks star.