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Fruit Egg-nog
1 egg salt 1/3 cup grape juice 1 teaspoon sugar 1/2 cup milk Beat egg and salt together until very light; add grape juice (other fruit juice may be substituted) then sugar and milk. Shake well with cracked ice, and serve in tall glass. Individual service.
A one-glass drink built on a whole raw egg that is never heated at any point. That single fact governs everything below.
- The egg is never cookedNothing in the method brings the egg above refrigerator temperature. A whole shell egg beaten into cold milk and juice carries a real risk of Salmonella, which is concentrated in no single part of the egg and cannot be beaten out of it.
- Grape juice does not make it safeThe acidity of grape or citrus juice is sometimes assumed to neutralise the risk. It does not; the pH of the finished drink is nowhere near low enough, and contact time is minutes rather than the hours or days that acid treatments require.
- No alcohol, unlike traditional nogNo alcohol, unlike some traditional nog -- Many eggnog recipes include spirits, and heavily spirited nogs aged for weeks have been shown to suppress bacterial growth. This version has none of that, and it is drunk immediately.
- Cold service compounds itShaking with cracked ice and pouring into a tall glass keeps everything in the temperature range where any organisms present simply survive. Served to children, older drinkers or anyone immunocompromised, it is a poor bet.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe for a fruit-and-milk shake written with modern egg handling in mind, and follow it as written.
- Reading the measuresThe salt is given with no quantity, as often happens in older books, and "individual service" indicates the quantities make a single tall glass.
Egg-and-milk drinks occupied an odd double role in early twentieth-century American cookbooks: they were party fare and they were sickroom fare, prescribed as an easy way to get protein into someone who would not eat. Fruit egg-nog belongs to the second tradition dressed up for the first. Non-alcoholic versions of this kind are characteristic of temperance-minded household manuals, in which "egg-nog" could mean simply a shaken egg-and-milk beverage rather than a spirit-laced punch. Bottled pasteurised grape juice was widely available and was marketed as a respectable alternative to wine, which may be why it appears here rather than the orange or pineapple juice a later book would reach for.