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Egg Wine
Beat an egg, mix with it a spoonful of cold water. Set on the fire a glassful of white wine, half a glassful of water, sugar, and nutmeg; when it boils, pour off a little of it to the egg by degrees, till the whole is in, stirring it well; then return the whole into the saucepan, put it on a gentle fire; stir it one way for not more than a minute, for if it boils, or the egg be stale, it will curdle. Serve with toast. Egg wine may be made as above without warming the egg, and it is then lighter on the stomach, though not so pleasant to the taste.
A single-serving sickroom drink, essentially a thin drinking custard made with wine instead of milk. Everything depends on temperature control.
- The hinge: temper, then barely heatPour the hot wine into the beaten egg in a thin stream while whisking, not the reverse, and return it to the lowest possible heat. Hold it between 160F and 175F until it just thickens to the consistency of light cream; above about 180F the egg proteins tighten and the mixture breaks into curds in the acidic wine.
- "A glassful"This means a wineglass, which in period books runs anywhere from 2 to 4 fluid ounces. The proportion is what matters: two parts wine to one part water, plus one egg. Start with 3 oz wine and 1.5 oz water for a single cup.
- "A spoonful" of waterRoughly a tablespoon, used only to loosen the beaten egg so it takes the hot liquid smoothly. Sugar is unmeasured; 1 to 2 teaspoons suits most palates.
- The wineThe recipe specifies a white wine, and a dry or off-dry one suits it best. Fortified wines such as sherry or Madeira also turn up in sickroom cookery and give a rounder result. Avoid anything heavily oaked or very acidic, as high acid encourages curdling.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the pan; a few rasps is enough. Pre-ground nutmeg from a jar contributes almost nothing here, and this is a drink with only three flavors in it.
- "Stir it one way"A common period instruction with no chemical basis. What is doing the work is constant gentle agitation, which keeps the egg from setting in strands against the hot base of the pan.
- "If the egg be stale"Older eggs have thinner, more alkaline whites that set unevenly and curdle more readily. Use the freshest egg you have, and if the drink is going to anyone with a compromised immune system, use a pasteurized shell egg.
- The unwarmed versionThe final sentence describes raw egg beaten into hot wine and served at once. That is a raw-egg preparation with no cooking step; skip it, or use pasteurized eggs if you want to try it.
- Yield and servingOne cup, one invalid. Serve immediately in a warmed cup with dry toast or a plain biscuit; it separates as it stands and will not reheat.
"Invalid cookery" was a standing chapter in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century household manuals, and egg wine belongs to a family of light, warm, spirituous nourishments alongside wine whey, caudle, gruel and beef tea. Before intravenous feeding, a patient who could not manage solid food was kept going on liquids that combined a little protein, a little sugar and a little alcohol, the last valued both as a stimulant and as a supposed tonic. The technique is the same as for a stirred custard, with wine standing in for milk, and it descends from the medieval caudles and possets given to the sick and to women recovering from childbirth. The author's closing note, that the uncooked version is "lighter on the stomach, though not so pleasant to the taste," reflects the period conviction that digestibility was the first duty of sickroom food and flavor a distant second.