Cider Egg-nog

A hot cider punch from the era when a bowl of something warm and frothy was set out for callers. Two parts of it never reach a cooking temperature, which is the reason for the caution above.

• Why it failsThe yolks are warmed only by whatever heat survives in six cups of cider as it is poured and beaten, and the whipped whites float on top untouched by heat at all. Neither component is brought anywhere near the 160F at which egg proteins are held safe from Salmonella, and the meringue cap insulates the surface rather than cooking it. If you want a hot cider nog, use a current recipe built around a cooked custard base or pasteurised eggs.
• "Cider" in this bookAmerican cookbooks of this period generally mean sweet, unfermented apple cider — cloudy pressed juice, not the hard cider the word denotes in Britain. Nothing here contributes alcohol, so there is no spirit doing any preserving or sanitising work.
• Six cups is the whole drinkThere is no water, milk or cream; the cider is the entire liquid (sweetened with the six tablespoons of sugar beaten into the yolks), which makes the quality of the juice the whole flavour of the bowl; flat, over-pasteurised supermarket juice tastes thin in this format.
• The hot punch bowlHeating the bowl first was not a flourish. Glass or china at room temperature pulls the temperature of the drink down fast, and a cold bowl of thick glass may crack outright when hot liquid hits it.
• YieldThe recipe gives six servings, one cup of cider each. The proportion of one yolk and one tablespoon of sugar per cup of cider is the pattern to notice.
• Nutmeg"Few grains" is the period shorthand for a very small quantity. Whole nutmeg keeps its volatile oils far longer than the pre-ground jar, so grating it fresh is worth doing.