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Cider Eggnogg
Put four lumps of ice in a tall glass, one teaspoonful of sugar, and one unbeaten fresh egg. Fill up the glass with sweet cider. Shake well, strain, and serve with a little nutmeg on top.
A temperance-era drink built on two ingredients that were safe enough in 1900 practice and are not treated as safe now: a whole raw egg and unpasteurized sweet cider. The notes below explain the terms and the hazard rather than offering a workaround.
- Raw egg, never heatedThe egg goes into the glass unbeaten and is never brought anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Shaking with ice chills it further. There is no step in this recipe that reduces that risk, which is why it should not be made as written; a current recipe using pasteurized eggs or an equivalent should be used instead.
- "Sweet cider" means unfermentedIn American usage of the period, sweet cider is fresh-pressed apple juice that has not yet turned — cloudy, unfiltered and unpasteurized. Hard cider is the fermented product. Untreated cider has been repeatedly linked to E. coli O157:H7 and Cryptosporidium outbreaks, and its mild acidity does not make it self-sterilizing.
- The two risks compoundNeither ingredient is cooked, and the drink is served immediately from a cold glass. Alcohol, which does some work in a brandy or rum flip, is absent here by design — this is a teetotal book — so there is nothing in the glass working against bacteria.
- "Four lumps of ice"Lump ice was chipped or broken from a block, so the pieces were large and irregular and the quantity is only approximate. It is there to chill and dilute during shaking rather than to fill the glass.
- Shake and strainThe shaking is what emulsifies the raw egg into the cider and gives the drink its foam; straining holds back the ice. The recipe makes a single serving, filled to the top of whatever tall glass is used; no capacity is specified.
- NutmegWhole nutmeg grated at the moment of serving was common practice, though ground nutmeg was also sold; complaints about the quality and adulteration of ground spices were frequent through the nineteenth century.
Books like this one appeared in quantity around the turn of the twentieth century, when the temperance movement needed to prove that a man could stand at a counter and be handed something interesting without alcohol in it. The strategy was imitation: take the established bar repertoire — flips, fizzes, cobblers, eggnoggs — and substitute cider, soda, syrup or milk for the spirit while keeping the ritual of the shaker, the strainer and the dusting of nutmeg. Eggnogg itself is generally traced to the British posset and sack-flip tradition, thickened drinks of egg, milk and fortified wine, and by the American nineteenth century the whole raw egg shaken into a glass was valued as much for nourishment as for pleasure. Sweet cider was the obvious temperance base in apple-growing regions: cheap, seasonal, and pointedly the version of cider that had not been allowed to ferment.“Uncle Sam's Water Wagon” in the title is the period slang — to be “on the water wagon” was to have sworn off drink.