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Auld Man's Milk
6 eggs 1 lemon I quart (4 cups) new milk or cream 1/2 pint (1 cup) brandy I lemon 6 ozs. (3/4 cup) sugar Beat up the yolks of eggs, then beat in the sugar and add the milk or cream. Now add the brandy and the grated rind of the lemon. Beat up the whites of eggs to a stiff froth, fold them into the mixture, mix well together, and serve half frozen.
This is a Scots eggnog: raw eggs, dairy and brandy beaten together and served barely frozen. Nothing in it is ever heated, which is why it cannot be recommended as written.
- Raw egg, never cookedThe yolks and whites go in uncooked and the drink is served cold, so there is no step that brings the eggs anywhere near a temperature that would kill Salmonella. Freezing does not kill pathogens; it only stops them multiplying.
- "New milk" meant unpasteurised"New milk" meant fresh milk -- new milk was milk fresh from the cow, unskimmed and, in the era this recipe belongs to, unpasteurised. Raw dairy carries its own risk of Listeria, Campylobacter and E. coli, and here it is combined with raw egg.
- The brandy does not sterilise itOne cup of brandy in five cups of liquid works out somewhere near 8 to 10 percent alcohol by volume in the finished drink. Spirits are sometimes credited with making raw-egg punches safe, but that effect depends on high alcohol and long refrigerated ageing, neither of which applies to a drink served immediately.
- The egg count is missingThe ingredient list gives milk, brandy, lemon and sugar but never says how many eggs, and the method calls for both yolks and whites. Comparable versions of this drink use six to eight, though the figure cannot be recovered from the text itself.
- "Serve half frozen" is not a chillIt most likely means the mixture was worked until slushy, in the same way as a water ice. A raw egg and dairy mixture served this way warms toward the danger zone as it stands in an open vessel or a glass.
- If you want the drinkUse a current recipe built on pasteurised shell eggs or pasteurised liquid egg, which is sold precisely for uncooked applications like this one.
Auld Man's Milk is a Scottish drink of the eggnog and posset family, its name generally explained as a joke about a restorative mild enough for an old man, or strong enough to be all the nourishment he needs -- an explanation that is traditional rather than documented. Versions appear in nineteenth-century Scottish cookery writing, where the spirit may be whisky, rum or brandy, and where the drink is associated with breakfast. The instruction to serve it half frozen points to a mixture worked to a slush rather than merely chilled.