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Yuletide Eggnogg
Place in a bowl the yolks of one dozen fresh eggs, and the stiffly beaten whites of two of the eggs; beat very light, then add a cup and a half of granulated sugar and half a grated nutmeg. Beat, and add slowly a pint of rich milk, four more egg whites beaten stiff, one tablespoonful of vanilla, and a pint of cream. Stir constantly and add a pint more milk. Beat the remaining egg whites and add three teaspoonfuls of powdered sugar, a teaspoonful of fruit syrup, and a little nutmeg; then drop by spoonfuls on the eggnogg. Set the bowl in another filled with cracked ice to chill thoroughly. This will serve ten people.
This is a raw-egg drink with nothing in it to make the eggs safe — no cooking, and, because the book is a temperance collection, no spirits either.
- Twelve raw eggs, never heatedThe yolks and whites go into the bowl uncooked and stay that way; the bowl is only chilled over ice. Nothing in the method brings the eggs anywhere near the 160F at which Salmonella is destroyed, and the drink is served as a pooled batch, so one contaminated egg contaminates all ten servings.
- No alcohol to do the workTraditional eggnogs usually carry a charge of brandy, rum or whiskey, and long-aged batches are thought to rely on that alcohol to suppress bacterial growth over weeks. This recipe contains none, so the one preservative element older nogs depended on is absent.
- Raw dairy on top of thatA quart of milk and a pint of cream, when this was written, would most likely have been unpasteurised. Even with modern pasteurised dairy the raw-egg problem remains, and a large bowl warms as it stands and is ladled out.
- Held over ice, not refrigerated"Set the bowl in another filled with cracked ice" chills only from the outside and only for as long as the ice lasts, which is not the same as holding a deep egg-and-cream mixture at refrigeration temperature.
- The meringue garnish is the worst partThe meringue garnish -- The spoonfuls dropped on top are beaten whites, sugar, fruit syrup and nutmeg, entirely raw and unbaked. Uncooked whites carry a risk of their own and this topping sits on the surface rather than being mixed through.
- If you want to make eggnogUse a current recipe built on a cooked custard base, or one that specifies pasteurised eggs. Reproducing this method with modern ingredients does not make the method sound.
Eggnog is often said to descend from the English posset, a hot drink of milk curdled with ale or wine and, in many versions, thickened with egg; by tradition it is supposed to have crossed the Atlantic and acquired rum in the Caribbean trade and whiskey in the American interior, and by the nineteenth century it was fixed in the calendar as a Christmas and New Year's drink handed round to callers. Removing the liquor left the confectionery — a dozen eggs, a pint of cream, vanilla, nutmeg and a teaspoonful of fruit syrup — and the recipe's careful staging of the whites, some beaten into the body and some floated on top, shows how much of the drink's appeal was texture rather than spirit. The nutmeg is the oldest survivor in the glass: it is traditionally associated with possets and flips long before anyone called the result eggnog.