Cream Eggnog
2 eggs 2 tablespoons cream A little sugar, if desired Beat the whites and yolks separately. Add the cream to the yolks. Put most of the beaten white into the glass. Pour the yolk mixture over it so that it will run down around the white. Put the rest of the white on top. If the sugar is used, part of it should be beaten into the white and the rest into the yolk mixture. A little vanilla flavoring may be added to this if desired.
This is an uncooked egg drink: two whole raw eggs, separated, beaten and swallowed cold. Nothing in the method brings the egg anywhere near a temperature that would make it safe, and unlike a spirited eggnog there is no alcohol here to inhibit bacterial growth.
- Raw egg, no heat stepSalmonella Enteritidis can be present inside an intact, clean, uncracked shell egg, not merely on the surface. Egg proteins are only reliably pasteurised by holding them at temperature — roughly 160F for a custard-style base, or the extended low-temperature hold used commercially — and this recipe never applies heat at all.
- Who this drink was forDrinks of this kind commonly appear in the invalid- or sickroom-cookery sections of domestic manuals of the period, aimed at convalescents, small children and the elderly. Those are precisely the groups for whom a Salmonella infection is most likely to become severe or invasive.
- No alcohol to helpSpirited eggnogs held for weeks in the refrigerator with a high enough proportion of brandy, rum or whisky have been shown to lose bacterial load over time, though the effect depends on strength and length of aging and is not reliable in a freshly mixed drink. This version contains no alcohol at all, so even that partial safeguard is absent.
- Beaten white increases exposureBeaten white, still raw -- Whipping distributes any contamination through the foam, which is then eaten in full. There is no cooking and no holding step that would reduce it.
- If you want the dishUse a current recipe built on either a cooked custard base or commercially pasteurised shell eggs or liquid egg product. Those exist and are widely available; nothing in this text can be adjusted to reach the same place.
- The creamThe two tablespoons of cream here are for richness and body only. Modern pasteurised cream carries no meaningful risk, so it is the eggs alone that rule the recipe out.
History: Books of this era treated eggs, milk and cream as medicine as much as food, and a family of "nourishing drinks" — egg nog, egg lemonade, milk punch, beef tea — commonly sat in the sickroom chapter of domestic manuals. The appeal was concentrated calories and protein in a form a weak patient could swallow without chewing. The careful layering described here, white below, yolk poured down the side, white on top, is presentation: it makes a plain glass of beaten egg look like something worth accepting. The name eggnog is often traced to "nog," a term for strong ale in parts of eighteenth-century England, though a derivation from "noggin," a small cup, is also offered; earlier recorded forms of the drink were generally alcoholic, and versions like this one omit the spirit.