Holiday Inventions 3: Goblet of Eggnog

once more, we have a holiday episode for you. It's actually going to be our third installment in our Holiday Invention series, where we more or less give the invention treatment to various holiday decorations, traditions, and toys. This year we're going to be looking in earnest at eggnog. Is eggnog an invention? Sure, we can stretch the definition. I

think that's okay. I think so. I mean, we did an invention, a full blown invention episode about the my Tie, which we you know, we had Jeff Beach Bumbarrion as a guest talk about that eggnogg is not something that occurs naturally in the world. It must be made at some point there had to be a first or something like a first, and you know, we'll get into that and and it's one of those things that has a

number of different customs and in cultural details surrounding it. Now, Joe, I'm not sure what your relationship with eggnog happens to be, because I don't know that we've ever really spoken about this. I don't think we've had eggnog together before. Uh, not that I recall, But my family's general approach is originally by a carton of almond nogg each year, largely for

our son because he gets super into it. And if I have a chance to visit a like an upscale um like cocktail place or a nice restaurant, then then I will jump at the opportunity to order an egg nogg if they have one on the menu. Um. In the past, I've made it down to New Orleans for the start of beach Bumberries Sippins Santa festivities at beach

Bumberry's latitude twenty nine. They also have pop ups all over the place, and uh, they'll generally have at least one holiday tiky beverage on there that is at least eggnog esque in form I'm picturing piles of crushed or pellet ice with kind of a frothy, creamy uh grime about them, and some nutmegs sprinkled over top. Oh yeah,

the nutmeg, as we'll discuss is, is pretty essential. So I didn't make it down there this year, but I did make it over to a tiki bar in um in our area, Decatur's s Os Tke Bar, and I enjoyed a frozen take on the classic eggnog. Um. It's generally a rich drink, though, so once twice three times

per year max. That's generally enough for me. Now. Before we came in here, though, I mentioned to my wife that I was about to record the eggnog episode, and she was kind enough to provide me with an entire glass of egg nog here for me to consume during this episode. Um, the listeners at home, you'll have to take my word for it, Joe. I think you can see it on the video feed here. Wait, is this is this full booze eggnog? Or well you you might

well presume that, but I couldn't possibly comment. Yes, creamy, rich, hint of nutmeg, beautiful. I have no eggnog in the house. A cute, cute, Joe Pesci and Home Alone saying eggnog, eggnog dressed as a cop like eggnog is the most disgusting substance on earth. And you know what, as a child, I that that was pretty much where my head was at. I was like, yeah, Joe Pesci and Home Alone is correct.

I found the idea revolting, not just revolting, I think I I think I probably found it borderline nauseating to think of a drink made out of eggs. Something changed over the years. Now I find it quite delightful. So it was the eggs that threw you off? Yeah, you're gonna drink eggs? I don't know. So I think about eggs. There's something that, you know, I liked eggs scrambled like they make them at the cracker barrel. Uh you know that I'm thinking of like a thick, uh yellow curd

like substance, and and always in savory context. I mean, I know obviously now that eggs are used in all kinds of baking and sweet context, but that's not how, not how I thought about them when I was a kid. So the idea of drinking a sweet egg based beverage was absolutely uh vile to my brain. I can understand that. I mean, especially even the name is a bit potentially off putting. It's very forward with the egg. What you were about to drink contains eggs, and then the nog

also can throw one for a curve. I do like some of the archaic spellings of eggnog that I've encountered researching this episode. Oftentimes the way we encounter it now it's e G G you know G, But some of these other spellings will be e G G you know g G. I like the double the double gs occurring in both parts of the work. That's just symmetry, that's good branding. Yes, now, before we proceed, I guess we should go ahead and drive home exactly what egg nog is.

We've alluded to it a little bit already, but technically it's a milk egg drink or a milk egg punch. And we've of course reached the point as a as a civilization where you, sir, you can have something that is identifiable as a noog without the presence of egg or dairy. But historically, this is the realm from which this beverage arises. Right, So you're you you mentioned almond nogg. I guess that is equivalent in the same way that

you might have almond milk. It is a substitute for milk. Yeah, though I guess it's even more like some people get up in arms, especially the dairy industry, I know about things that are not milk calling themselves milk. And even more to the point, I guess something like a soy nog or an almond nog is going to have neither eggs nor dairy, and so it's even further removed. But yet it's still very much in the spirit of the of the classic noggs, So I think it more than qualifies. Yeah,

nog is a thick, creamy, sweet drink. Yes, it's a state of mind. Um, it's a it's a it's it's a holiday tradition. Now, one of the sources I'm gonna refer back to several times in this episode is the excellent book Imbibe exclamation Point by David Wandridge, which is a text that we've referenced in the show in the past. It is one of, if not the best books you can pick up on the history of the American cocktail.

This is a great book. It cites, among many others, the legendary professor Jerry Thomas who lived eighteen thirty five, the New Orleans bartender who wrote the Seminal Bartender's Guide and helped popularize cocktail drinking in general. Um, I think we're going too more depth on this. In an older episode or episodes that we did together on Mixology, I think we ended up talking about absent a lot in those. Yeah, that would make sense, and I know, Um, Jerry Thomas

also comes up in the recent episode on ice. Uh the interview that I did. But according to one which basic milk punches go back to the late sixteen hundreds and to give you an example of what a milk punch consists of. And again this is not an egg milk punch, This is just a milk punch. Wonder which includes a recipe from Jerry Thomas. Jerry Thomas would have, you know, brought up together a bunch of these different recipes for drinks and and put them in his own

book at the time. This particular recipe from Jerry Thomas calls for sugar water, brandy, rum and shaved ice, A little nutmeg goes on top, and uh. Wonderage includes a quote from Uh. This is an eight quote from the Brooklyn Eagle that states that this punch was quote the surest thing in the world to get drunk on, and so fearfully drunk that you won't know whether you are a cow yourself or some other foolish thing. That's that's good. Uh. Well, now, one thing I have to point out is that when

you listed the ingredients, you did not list milk. So I assume these are the things that are added to the milk. Yes, yes, yeah, the milk would would also be an important part of this. Uh. It's so already we're kind of in the territory of what we think of when we think about egg non but of course there are no eggs there now when it comes to

egg nog itself. Um. Thomas was very much of the opinion that egg nog was quote a beverage of American origin, and wondered states that quote the drinks earliest mentions come from a eight Philadelphia newspaper, and all the other mentions are American, and if early European travelers to the United States viewed it as one of the novelties Americans were inflicting on the art of drinking. By the eighteen sixties, it was a drink of comfortable middle age with a wide,

if strictly seasonal popularity. When Thomas added that in the North quote it is a favorite of all seasons, he was certainly overstating the case. So you bring up that mentioned in the newspaper and this, uh, this name drop of eggnog as a recipe is also referenced in a great source I found that was aimed at unearthing the etymological history of eggnog, because it's obvious why the word egg is in the name. There are eggs in it, But what exactly is anog? Could, as the Simpsons proposed,

you equally whip up a cauldron of corn nog. Cornog sounds kind of delicious, like it brings to mind like corn puddings. I think it occurs in the Simpsons episode with the hurricane, when the stores are there's a run on the Quickie Martin. The only things left on the shelves are corn nogg and wadded beef. But anyway, diving into the history and etymology of eggnog or corn nog whatever,

what have you? Any noggs h My source here is a December two thousand nine article called the Origins of Ignag holiday Grog by the American linguist and language columnist Ben Zimmer, who is brother of the excellent science writer Carl Zimmer, who has been a guest on the show before.

So so here's what Ben Zimmer says about nog. The word nog first shows up as a regional term in England, specifically in the region of East Anglias as the eastern part of the country containing Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and it referred that term. They're referred to a type of beer. We know this because of a letter written from the County of Norfolk in the year six three by a man named Humphrey Pridou, who described quote a bottle of old strong beer, which in this country they call nag.

So nag is high gravity beer. It's it's strong stuff. But to take one step back, why would the East Anglians call strong beer nog? Z More identifies a couple of hypotheses here. One is that it comes from the word noggin, which we today think of as antiquated slang for head for your head. But before that noggen meant a small mug or a small drink of spirits. So perhaps noggin was shorter, was shortened to nog and it came to refer to the beer inside the mug instead

of the mug itself. And we do that kind of metonomy with with words today like did you have wine? Oh, I drank two glasses. You're not saying you literally drank the glass. The glasses mean the wine inside the glass.

But another idea is that the word nog for strong beer comes from a Scottish word nug or nugged ale, which means ale that you heat up by sticking a hot poker in it, which is funny enough to imagine in itself, but I can also see how that would correspond to a drink with strong alcohol alcohol con hint, because drinks with higher alcohol content were often said to taste warm or even to burn. M hmm, yeah, this

is this is interesting. It brings to mind the images of some of these older drinks where you would you would you would stick the hot, hot poker or some

sort of hot metal into it. I think there's a scene in the excellent TV series The Nick where you see some of the characters of getting a drink of this fashion Okay, so so far we've got the idea that you start with either a little mug called a noggin or a type of beer warmed with a hot poker called a nug and somehow one of these terms gets poured it over into this East Anglian word nog,

which means strong beer. But how does that actually get connected to the sweet, milky, eggy drink we are familiar with. We don't know for sure, but the link in the chain seems to be alcohol. Because while you can buy kid friendly nog in the dairy isle these days, everything I've been reading suggests that early egg nog was boozy. That was a primary characteristic of what the nog was. It had a lot of alcohol in it. Yeah, absolutely, that's That's exactly what I saw in all of my research.

Nobody's talking about egg nog is something that is then spiked. It is inherently spiked. And Zimmer reports that a Maryland clergyman named Jonathan Boucher is alleged to have written the first known reference to eggnog and a poem in seventeen seventy five, but this poem was not published until about thirty years later. So we don't know when it was actually written for sure, but the relevant section of the poem goes like this, fog DRAMs in the morn or

better still eggnog. This is nog with two g's at night hot suppings and at mid day grog my palate can regale. So you see the context here is fully alcoholic grog refers to a spirit or alcoholic beverage. Uh. Then there's that line, fog DRAMs in the morn or better still eggnog. A dram usually refers to a small drink of whiskey, and according to Miriam Webster, fog DRAMs are quote DRAMs resorted to on the pretense of their

protecting from the danger of fog. I'm sorry, boss, I had to have another whiskey before work, or the fog could have killed me on the way here. All right, Well, yeah, this is making sense as um as an early morning drink, though, because you get your your fog protection, you get a couple of eggs in there. Maybe you know this is a breakfast that you're drinking down exactly. Um, So Bouche

may have written that in seventies. It's hard to say for sure, but according to Zimmer, the earliest at rock Solid. References to eggnog, where we know the date of their publication, appear in a handful of newspapers in the year seventeen eighty eight, as you mentioned earlier. Now, one is a March seventeen eighty eight port in the New Jersey Journal, which and I love that this is what some newspaper

articles consisted of at the time. Uh. It says a young man with a cormorant appetite meaning like gluttonous, A young man with a cormorant appetite voraciously devoured last week at Connecticut farms, thirty raw eggs, a glass of eggnog, and another of brandy sling. Yeah, is this what newspapers were back in the day. Did you have like a gluttony page for you? Like, what's everybody over eating in

New Jersey? Stop the presses. We've got to get this story, this hot story about the guy who ate thirty eggs in there. Okay, so whatever eggnog is at the time, he had some Another article is from October eight in the Independent Gazetteer of Philadelphia, where a writer was complaining about an upset stomach and wrote, quote, when wine and beer punch and eggnog. Meat instantly ensues a quarrel that there's isdom to that. I think, Yeah, I've only ever

heard the liquor before beer kind of thing. I've never heard it taken out to four different things with like punch and eggnog in there. You know, we're looking back at a at a time when, um, when when drinking was a little more robust throughout the country. I think, yeah, uh so anyway, yeah, I love the fact that newspapers not only used to report on what some guy aided a form, but also what gave me an upset tummy.

Uh So, it sounds like an alcoholic beverage known as eggnog was in common parlance in the colonies and the young United States in the late eighteenth century. But Zimmer also documents how an early example of eggnog was associated with Christmas celebration by citing a piece in the Virginia Chronicle from January sevente which reads as follows. On last Christmas Eves, several gentlemen melt met at Northampton Courthouse and spent the evening in earth and festivity. When eggnog was

the principal liquor used by the company. After they had indulged pretty freely in this beverage, a gentleman in the company offered a bet that not one of the party could write four versus ex tempore, which should be rhyme and sense. Okay, he's like, we're so drunk, I bet none of you can write four lines of poetry that will make sense and rhyme. So what did they come up with? While one guy belts out the following tis eggnog now, whose golden streams dispense far richer treasures to

the ravished sense. The muse from wine derives a transient glare, but Eggnogg's drafts afford her solid fare. M hmm, so move over wine. The muses are no longer interested in you now they will only be singing to people who are chugging eggnog. Eggnog doesn't seem to have a personification though, Like there's no like Sadyer of eggnog, the Dionysus of eggnog.

It's you know, he was before it's time. I think he would have he would have approved of eggnog, especially based on these historical references to egg So do we know exactly what they were putting in eggnog at the time. Well, there's a book from seventeen called Travels through the States of North America and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada during the year six and ninety seven by an

Irish writer and explorer named Isaac Weld. And this passage actually reminds me of earlier when you were citing I think David Wondritch who said that sometimes people from Europe might encounter eggnog and think, oh what what, you know, what crimes they're committing against a drinking culture here in in in the Americas. Uh. And I wonder if there's a little bit of that kind of raised eyebrow going on in this passage. But we'll see what you think.

So Weld is writing about a stop at an inn near Baltimore, Maryland, where he right quote, several travelers had stopped at the same house that I did the first night I was on the road, and we all breakfasted together preparatory to setting out the next morning. The American travelers, before they pursued their journey, took a hearty draft each according to custom of eggnog, a mixture composed of new milk, eggs, rum,

and sugar beat up together. So eggnog it should be heavy, sweet, exploding with alcohol, drunk in large quantities in the morning before setting out on a long journey. Yeah, this is I mean it really it forces you to rethink eggnog because I think a lot of people are probably like like me, you grew up exposed to again, the grocery store eggnog, and there's this kind of sense that eggnog is this drink for everybody. Eggnoggs this drink for kids.

And as you get older, and then you're perhaps in a situation where you can have the eggnog with something added to it, eggnog plus uh if you like. But this that that the the historical truth of eggnog is no, this is the thing that the really drunken adults are having sometimes first thing in the morning. Also regarding famous eggnog recipes from the early days of of the United States, there is a famous recipe for eggnog that is alleged

to come from George Washington's kitchen papers. You'll find this if you google George Washington's Eggnog. I've seen some serious doubt cast upon its origins, like whether it was actually Washington's but According to the Farmer's Almanac, this famous recipe goes as follows. It's one court cream, one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, half a pint rye whiskey, half a pint Jamaica rum, and a quarter

pint sherry. And then you mix the liquor, separate the yolks and the whites of twelve eggs, add sugar to the beaten yolks. Mix well. Then you add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat the whites of the eggs until stiff peaks form, then fold slowly into the mixture. Then you let it sit in a cool place for several days. Then quote taste frequently. Uh. And I could be wrong, but I believe this is the recipe that our colleague, our colleague Alex Williams uses when he makes his famous

eggnog for for for all of our coworkers. Yes, it definitely is. This is This is definitely the recipe he would use, and it it is quite delightful. But yeah, I encountered the same thing. Looking at the uh, the actual history of this, there's some doubt as to whether George Washington actually serve this um and then there are some accounts that say, well, it looks like maybe there's evidence that that eggnog was served at Mount Vernon, But as far as the precise recipe, I don't know that

there's a lot of data to back that up. Yeah, though we will have we will touch on at least one former US Press resident who did have a recipe for eggnog and did serve it and drink it. All right, all this being said, before we proceed with agnog, I think we can at least consider the possibility of predecessors that, yes, even if eggnog is something that emerges in North America, there at least things not unlike eggnog that one can encounter,

say in at least late medieval and post medieval Europe. Oh, yes, some gorgeous textures to imagine. Yeah, so let's go back to the late Middle Ages and drink some hard milk. So European holiday traditions, which of course inform holiday traditions and Colonial American beyond, are a mix of Christian traditions, more ancient traditions, and a great deal of regional variability. I was, in fact, just researching the the the Hooden or Odden Horse of Kent for the Monster Facts series,

and I think that's a great example of this. Uh. It brings to mind various stum street wandering traditions as well as caroling and was sailing. Wassail, of course, is a door to door ritualistic and communal hot drink. The typically contained mold cider ale or wine and spices. But

then there is the tradition of the posett the poset. Yes, the Smithsonian Magazine website has a has a nice article about this title Past the Poset colon the Medieval Eggnog by Lisa Brahman, and according to this article, it apparently dates back to late medieval Europe, and it looks like some of the examples come to us from the post

medieval world and beyond. Anyway, the the poset itself is a drinking vessel, as Brahman points out, and you see mention of it even in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which Lady Macbeth poisons the posets of the guards outside Duncan's quarters. Oh I forgot about that. I had as well. When um, when the author here brings it up, I'm like, oh, yeah, I do remember that line vaguely, but you encounter so many archaic words if you're reading or performing Shakespeare that

you can't stop to wonder overall of them. It's enough to be like, okay, this this means drinking vessel. Okay, what's the next strange word that that doesn't quite register for me? Let me translate that one in my head.

But this is a If you you can actually look up examples of this vessel online the past, this po s s et and you'll find that some of the main examples of this it looks curiously like an ornate teapot with handles on both sides, a wide lidded aperture at the top, with a with a with a lid on top, and the stem for it, you know, like the like a t kettle. It feeds from the bottom of the vessel rather than from the middle or the

top of the vessel. The reason for this design, according to Brayman, is that you can drink directly from the stem to get at the liquid contents of the of the of the liquid it contains. But also you can take the lid off the top and go at the top of it with a spoon, because basically you're gonna have a mixture of thing. You're gonna have a fluid beneath and kind of a chunky, um, chunky, creamy, perhaps

cheesy layer at the top. So this is like, it's like a curdled milk drink that has that has cheesy, floaty solid bits on the top you want to get with a spoon. Yes. Um. The way that the Brayman describes it is quote both a drink and a dessert with a layer of thick sweet gruel floating above the liquid. Okay, so okay. On one hand, I realized that could potentially be interpreted as gross, But on the other hand, I think it's not that different from a lot of sort

of fropthy dessert things we have today. I think about certain milkshakes, certain smoothies, uh, certainly the especially the older school cappuccinos where the foam cap top was maybe a little firmer and you might have to go at that with a spoon as opposed to drinking it. So I kind of reject the idea that that this uh, you know,

potential hygiene issues aside of of late medieval ages. I don't think this is necessarily that gross of an idea that you could have some sort of like a thick portion on the top of your beverage that requires a spoon. It's just like a little different to imagine this bizarre container for its um consumption. Uh. Nowadays, I do want to point out we do have things like the spoon straw, which is like a plastic usually like a plastic straw

and spoon combined so that you can do both. They did not have this technology in the late medieval period to my knowledge. Therefore they had to use a posset. Well, you know, it is the same principle as a straw, which I don't find unusual. But I have to say it is funny to imagine somebody like drinking out of the stem of a tea kettle. Yeah. Yeah, it does seem like you might burn your mouth with this. It's recorded recipes. Uh, you know, many of these came came later.

I believe they called if you're going to fill the pacet, it would call for a great deal of egg and cream. They might also call for beer, sugar, and also thickening agents such as bread, biscuits, oatmeal, and almond paste. In some cases, the upper portions are said to take on a cheese equality, which actually brings to mind modern cheese milk tea drinks, which are quite delightful if if you haven't had one, I know this is something that can be kind of hard to imagine. Why should my milk

tea taste like cheese? Well, it's it's not. It's not what you're imagining. If you're imagining something that that turns your stomach. It's not like cheddar cheese on the top of your tea. It's something sweetier and creamier, but with that that slight cheesy twist to it, not like provolone right right now. I should also mention there there are more contemporary posset dishes, such as the oftensive recipes for something called an than paset, but this seems somewhat more

refined compared to what is described here. This is not something you drink out of a strange tea kettle. It's something you spoon out of a dish. But is it eggnog? Well, in many ways, if not most ways, no, But it also sounds like the sort of thing that if you were a time traveler from an eggnog having culture and you went back to the late medieval ages and you're like, where's my egg nog and people are like, what are you talking about? You might discover the pacet and be like, oh,

well this will work, this will do. Now my holiday is complete. Yeah, it's a liquid e egg and milk or egg and cream type thing, right. And I think it's not crazy to imagine that this sort of precedent for this sort of drink and the sort of taste sensations that it brings about, that this could feed into the very American traditions that would, according to Thomas, bring

about the American eggnog. So I assume after we get out of this, uh, this early period where where mentions are scarce and don't really explain much about eggnog except like the Irish guy who's clearly not familiar with it, we we get into a period where there is more extensive writing on eggnog, maybe like in actual cookery manuals. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot more material once you reach a certain point. Uh. And Wonder has a whole chapter on egg drinks in

his book I Vibe Um. As he writes it, their quote neither punches nor part of the lineage of cocktails. And this is also somewhat how Jerry Thomas and the people of his day would have classified them. One of the things that really amazed me about all this, though, is that the Wandridge points out that egg drinks were once far more common and kind of a daily affair, but that few survive today. Uh. This kind of comes back to your example earlier about eggnog for breakfast, why

not perfect, keep the fog away, etcetera. Uh Now, now I should point out this is the two thousand seven books, so I'm not sure if we've seen anything in the

way of a resurgence of egg drinks. It might be the case, though, you know, given the spirit of cocktail making and it's tend to to re explore older fashions and even remake them with modern twists, I don't feel like it's tremendously uncommon to find at least a single egg drink on a fancy cocktail menu, though to be sure, you probably won't find them on just random restaurant cocktail menus. Like I don't know if Chili's offers an egg drink.

I'm trying to think, what are the standard egg drinks other Well, I guess they're like um drinks I don't usually get, but like, are there like sours and phizzes and stuff that have that have egg whites in them. Yeah, I Wondering points out that the major survivors include the nineteenth century Tom and Jerry drink. This would be uh not getting into the proportions, but it's like sugar, eggs rum, cinnamon, clothes,

all spice. There's the sherry flip, which is basically egg, sugar and sherry, and he discusses his elsewhere in the book. But of course there's the Ramos gin Is, which is pretty famous New Orleans drink that contains gin, simple syrup, lemon juice, lime juice, egg white, heavy cream, orange flower water in club soda. It's one that famously requires a great deal of shaking. Um, you may you may receive a dirty look from the bartender when you order it

because of all the shaking it's going to require. Sometimes they were to pass it off to another bartender to continue shake shaking it. But it is also a delightful drink. But yeah it. Wonderage points out though that that that even though we only have so many egg drinks that kind of survived, there was this time where where egg based drinks, egg egg based alcoholic drinks were consumed on pretty much a daily basis, and we're as popular as

eggnog drinks are during the holiday year round. So just imagine, imagine a world in which eggnog is stocked at the grocery store year round to meet people's demand for it, and everybody's having it boozed up. Not that they bought it at the grocery store, they made it, right, You get my point. That's that sounds like a magical time,

a very rich, rich time. Yeah, But as Paul Clark points out in the Imbibe magazine article, elements egg cocktails, changing tastes and salmonella scares pretty much chased raw eggs out of the bar. And this, this would be kind of this would be the reason that only so many egg drinks kind of survived this period of time in which,

on one hand, yet changing taste. You can imagine, perhaps you know, there are new fads and cocktails, new ingredients are more readily available for cocktails, and then there's this whole issue of salmonella. Salmonella concerns, of course, remain relevant to this day, and we'll come back to those in

just a few minutes. Now. Wonder it also points out there was a great deal variation when it came to egg nog recipes, which I imagine is going to be the case with any popular drink, even if the recipe isn't secret. Uh. See the Invention episode we did about the my Tie for examples of this. On both counts. If the recipe is secret, people are going to try and recreate it. And even if the secret is if if there's no secret, if the recipe is well known,

you're gonna end up having deviations anyway. For instance, anywhere you go today the my Tai recipe, there's no telling what a restaurant will actually serve you if you order my Tai, even though um, the the the original recipe is very well known at this point, or it's it's very easily obtained if you have a desire to seek it out. And uh, but these regional differences in egg nog,

this would this would really make people emotional. Wondrid Show points that this account where there's a judge who encountered egg nog and an inn and it didn't have whiskey enough in it, and therefore there was this huge altercation. Oh yeah, I mean again, going back to stories about ends, you don't say what time of day this is, but this eggnog might have been his morning eggnog, which sets the tone for the entire day. It's like, you know, if you don't get your coffee right in the morning,

that's bad news. Yeah. If I don't get my my heavily alcoholic egg nog in the morning, I'm just no, I'm no good now. Sometimes those regional differences, though, are going to be entirely based on what is available to you. And a great example of this is the Texian version of eggnog includes the recipe in the book It is um it stems. It stems from General Thomas Green of the Army of the Texas Republic from eighteen forty three.

The recipe serves about a hundred and sixty. It calls for seven gallons of mescal, seven gallons of donkey milk, thirty dozen eggs, and a large loaf of sugar. I love that sugar used to come in loaves. Yeah, if you're making egg nog for hundred and sixty and a number of these recipes do call for large uh vats of eggnog, but this this is quite a lot. I mean seven gallons of mescal, seven gallons of donkey milk. I've never tasted donkey milk. I don't even know what

that would be like. Again to the two thousand seven book, but one Bridge mentioned that donkey milk was becoming popular at the time in Europe due to um this supposedly it had some health advantages to it. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if it's still popular as an alternative milk. I don't think I've seen it in myself in health food stores. But then again, I'm not really in the market for donkey milk anyway. What one writch roughly translates the recipe for modern drinkers in

that book. Um. He of course says you can use cow milk instead of donkey milk, and he also recommends grating a little chocolate on top. Mm hmm. So. Jerry Thomas apparently chronicled six different eggnog recipes, and one Rich includes recipes for three of them in his book. Roughly speaking, these are the contents of of these three that he shares. There's Baltimore eggnog, eggs sugar, nutmeg, brandy or rum wine, egg whites and milk. There's eggnog individual which calls for sugar,

cold water, egg kognac, Santa Cruz, rum, and milk. And then there's General Harrison zag nog. This this is ninth American President William Henry Harrison, and this was said to be one of his favorites. Um it called for eggs, sugar, hard cider, and lumps of ice. Important to note here that cider drinking was part of his brand. His whole image that he tried to put out was like, I I'm I'm not really at home in this whole Washington environment. I just want to sit on the porch and drink

some hard cider. Won't you have some of my hard cider based eggnog and vote for me? Yeah? That was him saying like, I'm just a you know, a hard working frontiersman. I'm not one of these elites. Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I I appreciate hard cider, but this sounds horrific. I don't think I would I would want any part of this, So General Harrison, no, thank you. General Harrison also died about some like thirty days into his first presidential term. Uh yeah, he's the

one who he didn't really make it very far. And their speculation about why he died, but one of them is that he may have succumbed to the fact that um that the water supply at the White House at the time was heavily contaminated with raw sewage. Huh interesting. I had a whole tangent for this episode about twelve years President Zachary Taylor, who fell ill with a fatal illness on July eighteen fifty after a d c DC fundraiser uh that he attended where he quote drank freely

of iced water and chilled milk. According to U biographer kay Jack Bauer in the book Zachary Taylor, Soldier, Planters, Statesman of the Old Southwest. UM, So i've i've I've seen this described as copious amounts of cherries and iced milk. Apparently he he preferred drinking chilled milk. That was his thing. That was the hardest drink that Zachary Taylor was known to imbibe himself. But I cut most of this out because he wasn't drinking um, as far as I can tell,

a cherry chilled milk concoction. It was just chilled milk and then also a lot of cherries and probably plenty of raw sewage. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Is it time for salmonella? Oh yeah, that's a great transition, so eggs and salmonella. Salmonella remains probably the main reason people have reservations about raw egg based food and drinks today. Uh. Salmonella is a genus of bacteria named not after salmon the fish, but after an American veterinarian named Daniel Elmer

Salmon that it was not discovered by him. It was named after him basically because a species of Salmonella was discovered by an assistant in a lab who worked for Salmon. The assistants name was Theobald Smith, but of course the boss gets all the glory. Some zero types of salmonella are responsible for really serious and historically significant diseases such as typhoid fever, but multiple types of salmonella will result

in infections of the intestinal tract. So salmonilla infection or salmon ellosis, is one of the most common food born illnesses, often characterized by fever, diarrhea, severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, and headache. And because salmonilla is often transmitted through the fecal oral route, the risk of contracting it is higher when people don't have access to clean drinking water and

effective sewage disposal. Though, salmon Ala can also be transmitted between animals and humans, so animal vectors, such as eggs from infected chickens, can be a major source of salmon ellosis in humans as well. Now, on the other hand, one thing to remember is that most eggs are fine.

Most eggs are not infected with salmonilla. I don't know what the exact proportion is, but one figure I saw kicking around from the two thousands was a C d C estimate that roughly one in every twenty thousand chicken eggs in the United States was contaminated. That number may be different today. If so, it's probably somewhat lower than that. But uh, you know, I'm not saying you should go about eating raw eggs. There is definitely risk there, but also like, the odds are pretty low that any given

egg is going to make you sick. Also, eggs are fine if you cook them to the proper temperature for the proper time. A hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit will kill just about anything instantly. Also, you know, even lower temperatures if held for a sufficient amount of time will be enough to UH, to basically sterilize eggs. This is, you can look up charts on the amount of time eggs need to spend at a certain temperature in order

to make them safe. However, eggnog is traditionally not made with eggs that are cooked at all, but rather with raw ones. So is there any risk? Well, yes, obviously if you are just drinking raw eggs straight up, there is some risk of salmonella infection. UH. One example of this, I mean it happens all the time, but one example, one case study I dug up with an interesting secondary finding.

This is a study published in The Lancet in nineteen seventy five by Steer at All called person to person spread of Salmonella typha murrium after a after a hospital common source outbreak. So the abstract reads in September nineteen seventy three, diarrhea caused by Salmonella typhemurrium developed in thirty two people in a main hospital. Both epidemiological and microbiological evidence indicated that raw egg beaten in milk for eggnog

was responsible for the infection. However, six patients and eight employees had not had eggnog and their illness developed after the source of infection had been recognized and removed. Most of these people had had direct contact with an infected patient and presumably acquired the infection by person to person spread. It's concluded that person to person spread of salmonella typhon miriam can occur in hospitals and canby a hazard to

patients and staff. So initially a bunch of people in a hospital got salmonella from drinking eggnog, but then those people gave secondary infections to others who didn't even touch the knog. Also, I wanted to share another medical journal article I found just because I thought it was very weird. This is called Eyelid Abscess in an Eggnog Drinker by Marcus and Wolverson, published in the British Medical Journal nine nine.

Short story is a seventy two year old man showed up the hospital in England with a huge abscess swelling on his left upper eyelid, which they eventually determined had spread to an infection of the bone in his forehead the area the bone above where his eye was so he was put under general anesthesia and the abscess was drained. They did a culture of the plus and it revealed

the presence of a type of salmonella. They eventually did another procedure to take care of the swelling in the bones of the face, and he eventually made a full recovery. The man had no gastro intestinal symptoms, and the authors say that there had been recent cases of salmonella infection related to eggs, So they asked him about his diet, and here I'm going to read from the case report. His diet consisted of West Indian and European food, but

he said that he cooked all eggs well. When he was seen in the outpatient department, he was specifically asked if he drank eggnog, and he then admitted drinking a frequently, using a recipe of raw eggs, brandy, sugar, milk, and

vanilla essence. Now, the authors say they could find no previous evidence of this particular type of salmonella causing an eyelid abscess, but that there are other known cases of this bacterial infection uh spreading from a gut infection originally to a secondary infection elsewhere in the body, such as in the bones, especially the long bones, especially in patients with underlying medical conditions, and in patients over seventy years

of age. Uh. And finally, the author's right quote. From nineteen eighty one to nineteen eighty six, the proportion of salmonella infections caused by salmonella and then they're talking about a specific type here, Salmonella in pteroditis rose from eleven percent to twenty eight percent. This rise was due mainly to a rise in phage type four infections. Transmission of this phage type has been increasingly associated with poultry, and

it is now known to be transmitted in eggs. Egg Borne Salmonilla in pteroditis is destroyed by thorough cooking the raw egg, and the eggnog may have been the vehicle of infection. Unless specifically asked for, a history of eggnog drinking may not emerge on dietary questioning. But okay, now, I'm sure a lot of people out there wondering, Wait a minute, Okay, obviously, you know you mix up a bunch of raw eggs and you just drink that, that definitely is putting you at risk. But if you put

alcohol in the eggnog, surely that would be safe. Right? Doesn't alcohol kill germs? Yeah? And we're talking a lot of alcohol, and some of these recipes now frustrating Lee. I have not been able to put together a very clear answer on the exact relationship between alcohol content and raw egg safety. Instead, I've sort of assembled some different inflicting data points. But I'll share a few of the

results I came across. So one thing I found is a study in the International Journal of Food Microbiology published in nineteen nine called survival of pathogenic micro organisms in an eggnog like product containing seven percent ethanol. This is by not Erman's at all, so this is a lab test. They say, let's make some boozy eggnog and uh directly inject pathogenic micro organisms in there and see what happens.

So they say, a liquor consisting of whole egg sacros meaning sugar and ethanol of seven was artificially contaminated with Salmonella in pteroditis, Salmonilia, typha, miriam, Staphylococcus aureus, three different strains Basilus serious, and Listeria. And they say after three weeks of incubation at twenty two degrees celsius, twenty two

degrees celsius is about seventy one degrees fahrenheit. Room temperature, the numbers of Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus and uh end of the listeria species they use decreased by more than three log based tin units and UH, if I understand correctly, I believe that's a ninety nine point nine percent reduction in the in the number of bacteria units. There they say under such conditions, however, the total number of micro

organisms increased three log ten units. Then they say at four degrees celsius, So I think this would be simulating refrigerator temperatures. The decrease of pathogenic microorganisms was much slower, and a decrease of three log based ten units was observed only after seven weeks of incubation. So this study finds eggnog without alcohol incubated at room temperature. Yeah, that's

you allow populations of salmonilla and staff to explode. But in this study, the presence of seven percent straight ethanol significantly reduced the amount of Salmonella staff in listeria over the course of three weeks at room temperature and over the course of seven weeks at fridge temperature. However, other micro organisms can grow. I'm pretty sure this is a recipe for eggnog that they used is the doctor cushion catheter r resopute for eggnog with all of these added diseases.

Mm hmm. You can just imagine Christopher Lee drooling over it while the Stanton Twins dance. But the the amount of alcohol clearly matters. One highly cited informal experiment. This was not published in a scientific journal as far as I can tell, but it was done and reported on by NPR for Science Friday. It was done in the late two thousands by microbiologists at the at Rockefeller University named Vince Fischetti and Raymond Shuck and it was covered

on Science Friday. And apparently these researchers used a recipe that the staff at the Universe City would make every year, which originally traced back to the great American microbiologist Rebecca Lancefield. So this is her original eggnog recipe. She had worked at Rockfeller University decades earlier. Apparent they're still making her eggnog years after she passed away. Uh. And the recipe includes raw eggs but also cream, sugar and a lot

of hard liquor. Uh. The liquors in this version are bourbon and rum NPR reported that the alcohol concentration of the final drink was about and the way they would do it is every year they'd make it before Thanksgiving and then enjoy it around Christmas time. So it had an incubation incubation period in the refrigerator of about six weeks. So for this experiment, the researchers made their usual nog, but they deliberately spiked it once again with salmonilla. That

just you can watch a video of this. They're just injecting this orange juice into the eggs. It's disgusting. Um. They say. They put in the amount of salmonella you would expect from including about somewhere between one and ten contaminated eggs, and then they took samples at various stages of preparation and incubation to see what grew over the course of the next three weeks. So egg plus salmonella with no alcohol, that's just it formed a solid mat

of salmon. Just huge boom, millions of bacteria. Disgusting. You can need your spoon in egg plus salmonella plus alcohol with the sample taken immediately after mixing give you a modest reduction, but still plenty of salmonella growth. This would still absolutely make you sick. Egg plus salmonella plus alcohol, But one day after mixing, still plenty of salmonella, but less than the one taken right after mixing. One week later there was noticeably less bacterial growth, but they said,

still probably enough to make you sick. But then the sample from three weeks later there's nothing, no bacterial growth at all. So somewhere between one week and three weeks this batch went from biohazard to presumably safe. HM though I noticed that the Science Friday report made a joke about like the researchers themselves are joking about this. They said, you know, we we could really commit to our result and just drink it, but maybe maybe not, which makes sense, right,

like why risk it? And that kind of spirit comes through in a lot of the other sources I've seen talking about whether alcohol will render your eggnog safe, because it seems clear there's evidence that at least in some cases, even if you got unlucky enough and got a contaminated egg, given enough alcohol and enough time, the nog would probably be safe. But there are a lot of variables here, and so it seems like a bunch of public Health

and Food say thesources are still cautious. There's still kind of cag about giving the green light on this, and they default to saying that if you want to be sure you're safe, you should use past your ized eggs from a carton which have been rendered safe by preheating

in the facility where they were packaged. Um or they also recommend cooking the eggs basically like sources citing experts at the FDA or the U s d A, say that you can't always count on alcohol to kill potential bacterial content of raw eggs, and if you want to be safe, the eggs should be cooked. You can do this by like mixing the eggs and milk together and gently bringing up to a hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit while stirring to kill any possible bacterial content before you

add the other ingredients. So personally, I don't know exactly

where we are left here. I will say it looks like some experiments do show that alcohol content will at least often, maybe not always, but will at least often neutralize the main bacteria that are worried about, meaning salmonilla, given enough alcohol and enough time, and I will say that I also, just speaking for myself, not giving advice to other people, have personally drunk eggnog made in this way with raw eggs but with lots of alcohol content,

and personally I felt fine about it. But it also looks like some experts still have concerns that this might not always work, and caution that if you want to make sure you're safe, you should cook your eggs or you s a pasteurized product. I mean, this is also enough to make one rethink um eating raw cookie dough and so forth. Oh yeah, I mean, well, it's true, I guess of anything with raw eggs in it, like,

there's always some small amount of risk. You know, some small proportion of eggs out there are going to be infected. Most eggs are fine, but some are going to have salmonella in them, So you're always running that risk. And I guess I guess some of the difficulty comes from not just whether or not you will accept the risk, but from not knowing exactly how risky it is. Like you you can't come up, you don't have a number, you know, to say like, Okay, I have this percent

chance of getting salmonella if I do this. Instead, you just have a vague sense that I have some small chance and I don't know exactly what that chance is. But in a way, that's the that's the holiday season. It's about it's about uh thinking about your your chances of survival, uh winter festivity that is supposed to get you through the darkest portion of the year and hopefully see about the resurrection of the living world. That's quite

beautifully put. But on the other hand, I'll just say, like, you know, if if you're not sure, yeah, just cook your eggs or just use the past your eyes thing. I mean, that's fine. Now. Last year, un stuff to blow your mind. We did an entire episode looking at the major award leg lamp from a Christmas Story, the nine eighties holiday classic film, and you know, looking at this leg shaped lamp and finding uh predecessors to this

in the ancient world. In a similar way, I would like to at the close of this episode on Eggnog consider holiday film Christmas Vacation, which of course started a great cast Chevy Chase, Beverly de Angelo, Randy Quaid, among others. Um. But there are at least a couple of key scenes in this movie in which the Griswold family drinks eggnog from glass goblets made in the likeness of the Wally

World moose. Uh. These are you can actually buy these now, this is an actual product, but in the movie they're these these little glass goblets and they have big glass moose antlers on either side, and there's a big droopy moose snout on the front. You hold it by the ear and you sip your eggnog that way or you gulp it as as happens to be the case in some of the scenes. I imagine the moon face has to be facing out or else the snout would sort

of prevent you from from getting it to your lips. Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to hold the glass in just the right way. It's a ceremonial vessel. And I started looking around was thinking, I don't know, I don't know if there's going to be something in the ancient world that matches up with this. But luckily, once more eighties holiday movie prop design is one in line with the manufacture of artifacts in the ancient world. I would like to discuss the the right on.

This is generally spelled r h y t o N and it is a style of head cup that appears in various forms throughout the ancient world, according to Mara Abd el Maguad el Kadi in Forms and functions of right ons in Ptolemaic Egypt. According to this author, they were likely Persian in origin, and we're particularly popular during the Akamand dynasty of fifty through three thirty PC. You can look up images of the right on in the various aversion of the right on that appear in different

times and different cultures. One can roughly compare these two a drinking horn like a you know, the hollowed horn of of a beast, but the design and function here is a little more involved. So imagine a drinking horn in which the slender part of the horn, the tapering part of the horn is in the likeness of an animal's head, or in the like the front half of an animal. M m. And we don't have time on this in this episode. Really dig into the variation and

the different cultural takes in this episode. But again, this would have been a realistic drinking vessel. This would not be something you would bust out, I would imagine for your just everyday consumption. This would be for ceremonial drinking.

And there are essentially two types of right on. In one form, you drink from the slender part of the right on, holding it above one's head or roughly, you know, above one's head, or at least parallel with one's head, by either twin handles on the side, or from some other kind of of handle that's a fixed to the object,

or even from sort of the the horn itself. In other forms, one drinks from the wide portion of the right on, so the whole thing is more like a traditional goblet, except many of these designs would require you know, gripping by the horns or by the or the antlers that are on it. If they're antlers on it, and you might not be able to set it down, it may not might not have a bottom to it. Wow,

well that that that almost suggests a certain way to drink. Yeah, and again this would be highly ritual, So it's it's not about setting your drink aside and then doing other things. You're not gonna do any paperwork. This is probably part of some ritual I don't know. You can easily imagine some sort of warriors feast, etcetera. Right, you can't drink it while you're podcasting. It's maybe to drink from while

people stand around you chanting drink right Uh. So there are various beautiful examples of the right on, but the one that really brought to my mind the Wally World mug is the Stag's head right on, dating to four b c E. This is a silver artifact that actually made headlines just last year due to its three point five million dollar appraisal value and its presence among stolen antiquities that were found in the possession of billionaire Michael Steinhardt.

Uh you can look up particles on that again from

just last year. The item was apparently alluded from a museum in Turkey originally, but I'm unsure exactly when the looting occurred other than sometime during the twentieth century during a time of unrest, which that only narrows it down so much concerning the twentieth century, though it does seem to be of ancient Greek manufacturer somewhere in the region of the Black Sea, probably from the fifth century b C. And with this one, you'd apparently drink from the stag's

lower lip while holding it aloft, though not by the antlers um as is visible in many photo is of this particular artifact. There's this curved handle behind the neck. Oh, I see it. Yeah, So the question remains, is the Wally World mug a right on? It's not no, it's yes.

It's first of all, it's not horn shaped. It also doesn't you don't drink from the moose's lips, though that alone wouldn't disqualify it from being a right on, as we previously noted, though, I've included a picture for for you, Joe, of a right on that would involve you drinking from the wide portion as opposed to the beast lips. You

can sort of see mm hmm. So this one would be very much a situation where you have this kind of like I don't know, bronze or golden chalice, and you wouldn't be able to set it down because instead of having a flat surface, flat bottom on the bottom of your goblet, there is like the head of a ram down there. Yeah, so you have to lay it on its side, I guess, in which case you would either spill what you were drinking or you would have to have consumed it all. Once again, the medium is

the message here. This This is technology that shows that by necessity shows you a way to use it. Yeah, However, I will say the Wally World mug is the likeness of a moose head. It is the likeness of an animal's head. It also is a ceremonial drinking vessel. They're clearly the Grizzwolds are not drinking out of these year round.

They're busting them out for the holidays. And just as some of these artifacts, such as the stag, were decorated with warrior images and images of battle, and we can imagine that the ceremonies they involved probably aligned with some sort of warrior ethos. We do see Clark Griswold drinking copious amounts of nod while working cousin Eddie up for violence.

So curiously I had to go back. I was imagining this, remembering this scene incorrectly, the scene where Clark Griswold is throwing back a whole bunch of egg nog and talking about how he wishes somebody would kidnap his boss. He's curiously not drinking from one of the moose goblets in this scene. Oh so, I don't know, I don't know what the reason for that is. You think you'd want him drinking out of the moose. Maybe it's just because you it's harder to to to hold. I don't know.

Maybe it's to show in a subtle way that Clark is actually coldly calculating in the scene and he's he's not as drunk as it would suggest. Yeah, that's a whole whole topic for another time, trying to figure out Clark Griswold. How do we feel about Clark Clark Griswold, about his his motivations and his desires. In Christmas Vacation, Clark is neutral, evil, cousin cousin Randy Quaid, I'd say

chaotic neutral, Yeah, I think so. Alright, So again, not really a right on in Christmas Vacation, But I think we might well imagine a scene from an alternate dimension in which, uh, there's a scene in Christmas Vacation in which Clark Griswold holds aloft the Mighty Wally the moose right on. Uh this big glass moose head. Perhaps it's

silver in this scenario, I think silver moose head. Perhaps you grip it by the antlers, and he's allowing cousin Eddie to then drink nourishing nod from the lips of the moose before he sends him out into glorious battle against the enemies of Christmas. All right, that's all I have. God bless us everyone. I will say also, I fortunately finished my egg nog before we got to the draining

of abscesses. So hopefully that calibrates the podcast episode for anyone out there who's like, oh, well, Rob's having an egg nog. I should have an egg nog for this listening experience. I hope that you two were finished before the abscesses were drained. Why are you saying that, Rob?

Are you saying that? Otherwise it would suggest the mental image that your glass of creamy mixture is what's out coming out of the abscess Yes, that it is a goblet of holiday pus which you might be drinking from the glass of a moose, which doesn't help, or from the lips of a moose. Right on, I guess Mary Christmas everybody, all right, Yeah, we're gonna go and close it out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone

out there if you have. I mean a lot of people out there are going to have some sort of holiday tradition involving some manner of egg nog. We didn't really have time to get into all the variations, but I know there's some. Uh this I think I've had like a Puerto Rican variation of egg nog before that was quite delightful. Uh, there's so many different regional variations, family variations. Please right in. We'd love to hear your

take on all of us. In the meantime, we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a science podcast with our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact. On Monday's we do a listener mail episode. Out on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Huge thanks to

our audio producer, Max Williams. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows