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Sherry and Egg
Beat the yolk of an egg and one teaspoon of sugar together, and add to this two teaspoons of sherry, brandy or port, stirring well. Beat the white of an egg to a very stiff froth, stir it in, beating well, and serve at once. This will quite fill the glass. If wine is not desired, nutmeg may be used for flavoring.
This is a raw-egg drink prepared for the sick, and that combination is exactly why it cannot be reproduced as written today. The points below explain what fails rather than how to adjust it.
- Raw egg, no heat at any stageBoth yolk and white go into the glass uncooked and the drink is served at once. Nothing in the method brings the egg anywhere near the 160F at which Salmonella is reliably destroyed.
- The intended drinker is the problemDrinks of this kind were prepared for the sick and convalescent, and those are among the groups in whom egg-borne salmonellosis is most likely to cause severe illness rather than a bad week.
- Two teaspoons of wine sterilises nothingSherry, brandy or port at this dose is a flavouring, not an antimicrobial. Even in the strongest of the three, the alcohol concentration in the finished glass is far too low to act on bacteria in the egg.
- The nutmeg version is no saferOmitting the wine, as the last line allows, leaves an entirely raw egg beaten with sugar. The hazard is the egg, not the absence of alcohol.
- Alcohol for a patientSpirits and fortified wine were commonly given in the sickroom in this period. Alcohol is no longer treated as a restorative for illness, and it interacts with a long list of common drugs.
- If you want an egg-based invalid drinkUse a current recipe built on pasteurised egg or a cooked custard base. This one should be read, not made.
Egg and wine drinks like this were a staple of nineteenth-century sickroom cookery, sitting alongside beef tea, barley water, gruel and wine whey in many household manuals of the period. The logic was straightforward and, in its way, sound: an invalid who could not chew or face a meal could still swallow a glassful, and an egg beaten with sugar delivered nourishment in a small volume. Sherry, port and brandy carried a further set of assumptions, being classed as stimulants and tonics rather than as pleasures, and were prescribed for weakness and fever. The Butterick Cook Book was published by the pattern company as part of its wider programme of domestic instruction for American women, and includes an invalid chapter because nursing the sick at home was an ordinary household duty rather than a specialist one. The separate beating of the white to a stiff froth, stirred in at the end, is the same trick used in period egg nogs and wine whips.