Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. It is
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve for many of you, and so we're off
Speaker 1: this week. Instead of a new episode, we have an
Speaker 1: older episode, this one originally published twelve fifteen, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: It is our invention style episode on eggnog. Get into
Speaker 1: the history of agnog and a little bit into the
Speaker 1: science of eggnog as well. So let's pour up a
Speaker 1: glass and sip it down.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. It's that time
Speaker 1: of year again, and by that time, I mean it
Speaker 1: is the holidays. We're knee deep, perhaps waste deep in
Speaker 1: the holidays, and there's no going back. We might as
Speaker 1: well just push forward at this point, like it's just
Speaker 1: as much just as much effort to keep going as
Speaker 1: it would be to turn back. So once more, we
Speaker 1: have a holiday episode for you. It's actually going to
Speaker 1: be our third installment in our Holiday Invention series, where
Speaker 1: we more or less give the Invention treatment to various
Speaker 1: holiday decorations, traditions, and toys. This year, we're going to
Speaker 1: be looking in earnest at eggnog.
Speaker 3: Is eggnog an invention? Sure, we can stretch the definition.
Speaker 3: I think that's okay.
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, we did an invention, a
Speaker 1: full blown invention episode about the Matai, which we you know,
Speaker 1: we had Jeff Beach bombarry on as a guest to
Speaker 1: talk about that. Eggnog is not something that occurs naturally
Speaker 1: in the world. It must be made at some point.
Speaker 1: There had to be a first or something like a first,
Speaker 1: and you know, we'll get into that. And it's one
Speaker 1: of those things that has a number of different customs
Speaker 1: and cold details surrounding it. Now, Joe, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what your relationship with eggnog happens to be, because I
Speaker 1: don't know that we've ever really spoken about this. I
Speaker 1: don't think we've had eggnog together before, not that I recall,
Speaker 1: but my family's general approach is originally buy a carton
Speaker 1: of almond nog each year, largely for our son because
Speaker 1: he gets super into it. And if I have a
Speaker 1: chance to visit a like an upscale cocktail place or
Speaker 1: a nice restaurant, then I will jump at the opportunity
Speaker 1: to order an eggnog. If they have one on the menu.
Speaker 1: In the past, I've made it down to New Orleans
Speaker 1: for the start of beach Bumberry Sippings Santa Festivities at
Speaker 1: beach Bumberry's Latitude twenty nine. They also have pop ups
Speaker 1: all over the place, and they'll generally have at least
Speaker 1: one holiday teaki beverage on there that is at least
Speaker 1: eggnog esque.
Speaker 3: In form I'm picturing piles of crushed or pellet ice
Speaker 3: with kind of a frothy, creamy rye about them, and
Speaker 3: some nutmeg sprinkled over top.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the nutmeg, as we'll discuss, is pretty essential.
Speaker 1: So I did make it down there this year, but
Speaker 1: I did make it over to a tiki bar in
Speaker 1: our area, Decatur's Sos t Bar, and I enjoyed a
Speaker 1: frozen take on a classic eggnog. Generally a rich drink,
Speaker 1: though so once twice three times per year max. That's
Speaker 1: generally enough from me. Uh huh. Now. Before we came
Speaker 1: in here, though, I mentioned to my wife that I
Speaker 1: was about to record the eggnog episode, and she was
Speaker 1: kind enough to provide me with an entire glass of
Speaker 1: eggnog here for me to consume during this episode. The
Speaker 1: listeners at home. You'll have to take my word for it, Joe.
Speaker 1: I think you can see it on the video feed here.
Speaker 3: Wait, is this full booze eggnog?
Speaker 1: Or well you might well presume that, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly comment. Yes, creamy, rich, hint of.
Speaker 3: Nutmeg, beautiful, I have no eggnog in the house. A cute,
Speaker 3: cute Joe Peshi and Home Alone saying eggnog, eggnog dressed
Speaker 3: as a cop like eggnog is the most disgusting substance
Speaker 3: on Earth. And you know what, as a child, that
Speaker 3: was pretty much where my head was at. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: Joe Peshi in Home Alone is correct. I found the
Speaker 3: idea revolting, not just revolting, I think, I I think
Speaker 3: I probably found it borderline nauseating to think of a
Speaker 3: drink made out of eggs. Something changed over the years.
Speaker 3: Now I find it quite delightful.
Speaker 1: So was the eggs that threw you off?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you're gonna drink eggs. I don't know. So
Speaker 3: I think about eggs. There's something that, you know, I
Speaker 3: liked eggs scrambled like they make them at the cracker barrel.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm thinking of like a thick, yellow curd
Speaker 3: like substance, and always in savory context. I mean, I know,
Speaker 3: obviously now that eggs are used in all kinds of
Speaker 3: baking and sweet contexts, but that's not how I thought
Speaker 3: about them when I was a kid. So the idea
Speaker 3: of drink thinking a sweet egg based beverage was absolutely
Speaker 3: vile to my brain.
Speaker 1: I can understand that. I mean, especially even the name
Speaker 1: is a bit potentially off putting. It's very forward with
Speaker 1: the egg. What you were about to drink contains eggs,
Speaker 1: and then the nog also can throw one for a curve.
Speaker 1: I do like some of the archaic spellings of eggnog
Speaker 1: that I've encountered researching this episode. Oftentimes the way we
Speaker 1: encounter it now it's egg n og, but some of
Speaker 1: these other spellings will be egg n ogg. I like
Speaker 1: the double g's occurring in both parts of the world.
Speaker 3: That's just symmetry. That's good branding.
Speaker 1: Yes, now, before we proceed, I guess we should go
Speaker 1: ahead and drive home exactly what eggnog is. We've alluded
Speaker 1: to it a little bit already, but technically it's a
Speaker 1: milk egg drink or a milk egg punch and we've
Speaker 1: of course reached the points as a civilization where you
Speaker 1: can have something that is identified as a nog without
Speaker 1: the presence of egg or dairy. But historically this is
Speaker 1: the realm from which this beverage arises.
Speaker 3: Right, So you're you mentioned almond nog. I guess that
Speaker 3: is equivalent in the same way that you might have
Speaker 3: almond milk. It is a substitute for milk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though I guess it's even more like some people
Speaker 1: get up in arms, especially the dairy industry. I know
Speaker 1: about things that are not milk calling themselves milk. And
Speaker 1: even more to the point, I guess something like a
Speaker 1: soy nog or an almond nog is going to have
Speaker 1: neither eggs nor dairy, and so it is even further removed.
Speaker 1: But yet it's still very much in the spirit of
Speaker 1: of of the classic nog. So I think it more
Speaker 1: than qualifies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nog is a thick, creamy, sweet drink.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a state of mind. It's it's it's a
Speaker 1: holiday tradition. Now, one of the sources I'm going to
Speaker 1: refer back to several times in this episode is the
Speaker 1: excellent book Imbibe exclamation Point by David Wandriche, which is
Speaker 1: a text that we've referenced in the show in the past.
Speaker 1: It is one of, if not the best books you
Speaker 1: can pick up on the history of the American cocktail.
Speaker 1: This is a great book. It cites, among many others,
Speaker 1: the legendary professor Jerry Thomas, who lived eighteen thirty through
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty five, the New Orleans bartender who wrote the
Speaker 1: Seminole Bartender's Guide and helped popularize cocktail drinking in general.
Speaker 1: I think we're go into more depth on this in
Speaker 1: an older episode or episodes that we did together on Mixology.
Speaker 3: I think we ended up talking about absinthe a lot
Speaker 3: in those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would make sense. And I know Jerry Thomas
Speaker 1: also comes up in the recent episode on ice the
Speaker 1: interview that I did. But according to Wondrich, basic milk
Speaker 1: punches go back to the late sixteen hundreds and to
Speaker 1: give you an example of what a milk punch consists of,
Speaker 1: and again this is not an egg milk punch. This
Speaker 1: is just a milk punch. Wondrich includes a recipe from
Speaker 1: Jerry Thomas. Jerry Thomas would have you know, brought up
Speaker 1: together bunch of these different recipes for drinks and put
Speaker 1: them in his own book at the time. This particular
Speaker 1: recipe from Jerry Thomas calls for sugar water, brandy, rum,
Speaker 1: and shaved ice, A little nutmeg goes on top, and
Speaker 1: Wandritch includes a quote from This is an eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: three quote from the Brooklyn Eagle that states that this
Speaker 1: punch was quote the surest thing in the world to
Speaker 1: get drunk on, and so fearfully drunk that you won't
Speaker 1: know whether you are a cow yourself or some other
Speaker 1: foolish thing.
Speaker 3: Hmmm, that's that's good.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: One thing I have to point out is that when
Speaker 3: you listed the ingredients, you did not list milk. So
Speaker 3: I assume these are the things that are added to
Speaker 3: the milk.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, okay, yeah. The milk would would also be
Speaker 1: be an important part of this. So already we're kind
Speaker 1: of in the territory of what we think of when
Speaker 1: we think about eggnog, but of course there are no
Speaker 1: eggs there now. When it comes to eggnog itself. Thomas
Speaker 1: was very much of the opinion that eggnog was quote
Speaker 1: a beverage of American origin, and Wondrich states that quote
Speaker 1: the drink's earliest mentions come from a seventeen eighty eight
Speaker 1: Philadelphia newspaper, and all the other mentions are American, and
Speaker 1: if early European travelers to the United States viewed it
Speaker 1: as one of the novelties Americans were inflicting on the
Speaker 1: art of drinking. By the eighteen sixties, it was a
Speaker 1: drink of comfortable middle age with a wide, if strictly
Speaker 1: seasonal popularity. When Thomas added that in the North quote
Speaker 1: it is a favorite of all seasons, he was certainly
Speaker 1: overstating the case.
Speaker 3: So you bring up that mention in the seventeen eighty
Speaker 3: eight newspaper, and this name drop of eggnog as a
Speaker 3: recipe is also referenced in a great source I found
Speaker 3: that was aimed at unearthing the etymological history of egnog,
Speaker 3: because it's obvious why the word egg is in the name.
Speaker 3: There are eggs in it, But what exactly is anog? Could,
Speaker 3: as the Simpsons propose, do you equally whip up a
Speaker 3: cauldron of corn nog?
Speaker 1: Cornog sounds kind of delicious, like it brings to mind
Speaker 1: like corn puddings.
Speaker 3: I think it occurs in the Simpsons episode with the Hurricane,
Speaker 3: when the stores are there's a run on the quickie
Speaker 3: mart and the only things left on the shelves are
Speaker 3: corn nog and wadded beef. But anyway, diving into the
Speaker 3: history and etymology of eggnog or corn nog whatever, what
Speaker 3: have you? Any nogs? My source here is a December
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine article called the Origins of Eggnog
Speaker 3: Holiday Grog by the American linguist and language columnist Ben Zimmer,
Speaker 3: who is brother of the excellent science writer Karl Zimmer,
Speaker 3: who's been a guest on.
Speaker 1: The show before Huh Crazy.
Speaker 3: So here's what Ben Zimmer says about nog. The word
Speaker 3: noog first shows up as a regional term in England,
Speaker 3: specifically in the region of East Anglia, so it's the
Speaker 3: eastern part of the country containing Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire,
Speaker 3: and it referred that term. They are referred to a
Speaker 3: type of beer. We know this because of a letter
Speaker 3: written from the County of Norfolk in the year sixteen
Speaker 3: ninety three by a man named Humphrey Prideaux, who described
Speaker 3: quote a bottle of old strong beer, which in this
Speaker 3: country they call nog. So nog is high gravity beer.
Speaker 3: It's strong stuff, but to take one step back, why
Speaker 3: would the East Anglians call strong beer nog? Zimmer identifies
Speaker 3: a couple of hypotheses here. One is that it comes
Speaker 3: from the word noggin, which we today think of as
Speaker 3: antiquated slang for head for your head. But before that
Speaker 3: nogin meant a small mug or a small drink of spirits.
Speaker 3: So perhaps noggin was shorter, was shortened to nog, and
Speaker 3: it came to refer to the beer inside the mug
Speaker 3: instead of the mug itself. And we do that kind
Speaker 3: of metonymy with words today like did you have wine? Oh,
Speaker 3: I drank two glasses. You're not saying you literally drank
Speaker 3: the glass. The glasses mean the wine inside the glass, right.
Speaker 3: But another idea is that the word nog for strong
Speaker 3: beer comes from a Scottish word nug or nuged ale,
Speaker 3: which means ale that you heat up by sticking a
Speaker 3: hot poker in it, which is funny enough to imagine
Speaker 3: in itself, but I can also see how that would
Speaker 3: correspond to a drink with strong alcohol alcohol content, because
Speaker 3: drinks with higher alcohol content are often said to taste
Speaker 3: warm or even to burn.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, yeah, this is this is interesting. It brings to mind,
Speaker 1: you know, the images of some of these older drinks
Speaker 1: where you'd you would you would stick the hot poker
Speaker 1: or some sort of hot metal into it. I think
Speaker 1: there's a scene in the excellent TV series The Nick
Speaker 1: where you see some of the characters getting a drink
Speaker 1: of this fashion.
Speaker 3: M Okay, So so far, we've got the idea that
Speaker 3: you start with either a little mug called a noggin
Speaker 3: or a type of beer warmed with a hot poker
Speaker 3: called a nug And somehow one of these terms gets
Speaker 3: poured it over into this East Anglian word nog, which
Speaker 3: means strong beer. But how does that actually get connected
Speaker 3: to the sweet, milky, eggy drink we are familiar with.
Speaker 3: We don't know for sure, but the link in the
Speaker 3: chain seems to be alcohol. Because while you can buy
Speaker 3: kid friendly nog in the dairy issle these days, everything
Speaker 3: I've been reading suggests that early eggnog was boozy. That
Speaker 3: was a primary characteristic of what the noog was. It
Speaker 3: had a lot of alcohol in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, that's exactly what I saw in all of
Speaker 1: my research. Nobody's talking about eggnog is something that is
Speaker 1: then spiked it is inherently spiked.
Speaker 3: And Zimmer reports that a Maryland clergyman named Jonathan Bouchet
Speaker 3: is alleged to have written the first known reference to
Speaker 3: eggnog a poem in seventeen seventy five, but this poem
Speaker 3: was not published until about thirty years later, so we
Speaker 3: don't know when it was actually written for sure. But
Speaker 3: the relevant section of the poem goes like this, fog
Speaker 3: DRAMs in the morn or better still eggnog. This is
Speaker 3: nog with two g's at night hot suppings and at
Speaker 3: midday grog my palate can regale. So you see the
Speaker 3: context here is fully alcoholic grog refers to a spirit
Speaker 3: or alcoholic beverage. Then there's that line, fog DRAMs in
Speaker 3: the morn or better still eggnog. A dram usually refers
Speaker 3: to a small drink of whiskey, and according to Miriam Webster,
Speaker 3: fog DRAMs are quote DRAMs resorted to on the pretense
Speaker 3: of their protecting from the danger of fog. I'm sorry, boss,
Speaker 3: I had to have another whiskey before work, or the
Speaker 3: fog could have killed me on the way here.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, this is making sense. Is an early
Speaker 1: morning drink though, because you get your fog protection, you
Speaker 1: get a couple of eggs in there. Maybe you know
Speaker 1: this is a breakfast that you're drinking down exactly.
Speaker 3: So Bouchet may have written that in seventy seventy five.
Speaker 3: It's hard to say for sure, but according to Zimmer,
Speaker 3: the earliest at rock solid references to eggnog where we
Speaker 3: know the date of their publication, appear in a handful
Speaker 3: of newspapers in the year seventeen eighty eight, as you
Speaker 3: mentioned earlier. Now one is a March seventeen eighty eight
Speaker 3: report in the New Jersey Journal, which and I love
Speaker 3: that this is what some newspaper articles consisted of at
Speaker 3: the time. It says, a young man with a cormorant
Speaker 3: appetite meaning like gluttonous, A young man with a cormorant
Speaker 3: appetite voraciously devoured last week at Connecticut farms, thirty raw eggs,
Speaker 3: a glass of eggnog, and another of brandy sling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is this what newspapers were back in the day?
Speaker 1: Did you have like a gluttony page? Fore you're like,
Speaker 1: what's everybody overeating in New Jersey?
Speaker 3: Stop the presses. We've got to get this story. This
Speaker 3: hot story about the guy who ate thirty eggs in there. Okay,
Speaker 3: so whatever eggnog is at the time, he had some
Speaker 3: Another article is from October seventeen eighty eight in the
Speaker 3: Independent Gazetteer of Philadelphia, where a writer was complaining about
Speaker 3: an upset stomach and wrote, quote, when wine and beer,
Speaker 3: punch and eggnog meat instantly ensues a.
Speaker 1: Quarrel, there's wisdom to that.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, I've only ever heard the liquor before
Speaker 3: beer kind of thing. I've never heard it taken out
Speaker 3: to four different things with like punch and eggnog in there.
Speaker 1: You know, we were looking back at a time when
Speaker 1: drinking was a little more robust throughout the country.
Speaker 3: I think. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, I love the fact
Speaker 3: that newspapers not only used to report on what some
Speaker 3: guy aded a form, but also what gave me an
Speaker 3: upset tummy. So it sounds like an alcoholic beverage known
Speaker 3: as eggnog was in common parlance in the colonies and
Speaker 3: the young United States in the late eighteenth century. But
Speaker 3: Zimmer also documents how an early example of eggnog was
Speaker 3: associated with Christmas celebration by citing a piece in the
Speaker 3: Virginia Chronicle from January seventeen ninety three, which reads as follows.
Speaker 3: On last Christmas Eve, several gentlemen met at Northampton Courthouse
Speaker 3: and spent the evening in mirth and festivity when eggnog
Speaker 3: was the principal liquor used by the company. After they
Speaker 3: had indulged pretty freely in this beverage, a gentleman in
Speaker 3: the company offered a bet that not one of the
Speaker 3: party could write four verses extempore, which should be rhyme
Speaker 3: and sense. Okay, He's like, we're so drunk, I bet
Speaker 3: none of you can write four lines of poetry that
Speaker 3: will make sense and rhyme. So what do they come
Speaker 3: on up with?
Speaker 1: Will?
Speaker 3: One guy belts out the following 'tis eggnog now, whose
Speaker 3: golden streams dispense far richer treasures to the ravished sense
Speaker 3: the muse from wine derives a transient glare, but Eggnog's
Speaker 3: drafts afford her solid fare. So move over, wine. The
Speaker 3: muses are no longer interested in you now they will
Speaker 3: only be singing to people who are chug and agnog.
Speaker 1: Eggnog doesn't seem to have a personification, though, like there's
Speaker 1: no like Satyr of eggnog.
Speaker 3: Right, the Dionysus of eggnog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose it's you know, he was before its time.
Speaker 1: I think he would have approved of eggnog, especially based
Speaker 1: on these historical references to agnog.
Speaker 3: So do we know exactly what they were putting in
Speaker 3: eggnog at the time. Well, there's a book from seventeen
Speaker 3: ninety nine called Travels through the States of North America
Speaker 3: and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada during the
Speaker 3: years seventy ninety five ninety six ninety seven by an
Speaker 3: Irish writer and explorer named Isaac Weld, And this passage
Speaker 3: actually reminds me of earlier when you were citing I
Speaker 3: think David Wondrich who said that sometimes people from Europe
Speaker 3: might encounter eggnog and think, oh what, you know, what
Speaker 3: crimes they're committing against a drinking culture here in the Americas.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if there's a little bit of that
Speaker 3: kind of raised eyebrow going on in this passage. But
Speaker 3: we'll see what you think. So Weld is writing about
Speaker 3: a stop at an inn near Baltimore, Maryland, where he writes, quote,
Speaker 3: several travelers had stopped at the same house that I
Speaker 3: did the first night I was on the road, and
Speaker 3: we all breakfasted together preparatory to setting out the next morning.
Speaker 3: The American travelers, before they pursued their journey, took a
Speaker 3: hearty draft each. According to custom of eggnog, a mixture
Speaker 3: composed of new milk, eggs, rum, and sugar beat up together.
Speaker 3: So eggnog it should be heavy, suite, exploding with alcohol,
Speaker 3: drunk in large quantities in the morning before setting out
Speaker 3: on a long journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is I mean it really it forces you
Speaker 1: to rethink egnog because I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: are probably like like me, You grew up exposed to again,
Speaker 1: the grocery store eggnog, and there's this kind of sense
Speaker 1: that egnog is this drink for everybody. Eggnog's this drink
Speaker 1: for kids. And as you get older, then you're perhaps
Speaker 1: in a situation where you can have the eggnog with
Speaker 1: something added to it, eggnog plus you know, if you
Speaker 1: like this. But the historical truth of egnog is no,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that the really drunken adults are
Speaker 1: having sometimes first thing in the morning.
Speaker 3: Also regarding famous eggnog recipes from the early days, of
Speaker 3: the United States. There is a famous recipe for eggnog
Speaker 3: that is alleged to come from George Washington's kitchen papers.
Speaker 3: You'll find this if you google George Washington's Eggnog. I've
Speaker 3: seen some serious doubt cast upon its origins, like whether
Speaker 3: it was actually Washington's. But according to the Farmer's Almanac,
Speaker 3: this famous recipe goes as follows. It's one quart cream,
Speaker 3: one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy,
Speaker 3: half a pint rye whiskey, half a pint Jamaica rum,
Speaker 3: and a quarter pint sherry. And then you mix the liquor.
Speaker 3: Separate the yolks in the whites of twelve eggs, add
Speaker 3: sugar to the beaten yolks. Mix well. Then you add
Speaker 3: milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat the whites of the
Speaker 3: eggs until stiff peaks form, then fold slowly into the mixture.
Speaker 3: Then you let it sit in a cool place for
Speaker 3: several days. Then quote taste frequently. And I could be wrong,
Speaker 3: but I believe this is the recipe that our our
Speaker 3: colleague Alex Williams uses when he makes his famous eggnog.
Speaker 3: For all of our coworkers.
Speaker 1: Yes, it definitely is. This is definitely the recipe he
Speaker 1: would use, and it is quite delightful. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: encountered the same thing. Looking at the actual history of this,
Speaker 1: there's some doubt as to whether George Washington actually serve this.
Speaker 1: And then there are some accounts that say, well, it
Speaker 1: looks like maybe there's evidence that eggnog was served at
Speaker 1: Mount Vernon, But as far as the precise recipe, I
Speaker 1: don't know that there's a lot of data to back
Speaker 1: that up. Yeah, though we will have we will touch
Speaker 1: on at least one former US president who did have
Speaker 1: a recipe for eggnog and did serve it and drink it.
Speaker 1: All right, all this being said, before we proceed with egnog,
Speaker 1: I think we can at least consider the possibility of
Speaker 1: predecessors that, Yes, even if egnog is something that emerges
Speaker 1: in North America, there are at least things not unlike
Speaker 1: egnog that one can encounter, say in at least late
Speaker 1: medieval and post medieval Europe.
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, some gorgeous textures to imagine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's go back to the late Middle Ages
Speaker 1: and drink some hard milk. So European holiday traditions, which
Speaker 1: of course inform holiday traditions, and Colonial America and beyond
Speaker 1: are a mix of Christian traditions, more ancient traditions, and
Speaker 1: a great deal of regional variability. I was, in fact,
Speaker 1: just researching the Hooden or Hoden Horse of Kent for
Speaker 1: the Monster Fact series, and I think that's a great
Speaker 1: example of this. It brings to mind various costume street
Speaker 1: wandering traditions as well as caroling and was sailing. Wassaile,
Speaker 1: of course, is a door to door ritualistic and communal
Speaker 1: hot drink that typically contained mulled cider ale or wine
Speaker 1: and spices. But then there is the tradition of the
Speaker 1: passet posset the posset. Yes, the Smithsonian magazine website has
Speaker 1: a nice article about this titled Past the Posset colon
Speaker 1: the Medieval Eggnog by Lisa Brahman, and according to this article,
Speaker 1: it apparently dates back to late medieval Europe, and it
Speaker 1: looks like some of the examples come to us from
Speaker 1: the post medieval world and beyond. Anyway, the passet itself
Speaker 1: is a drinking vessel, as Brayman points out, and you
Speaker 1: see mention of it even in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which
Speaker 1: Lady Macbeth poisons the possets of the guards outside Duncan's quarters.
Speaker 3: Oh I forgot about that.
Speaker 1: I had as well when when the author here brings
Speaker 1: it up, I'm like, oh, yeah, I do remember that
Speaker 1: line vaguely. But you encounter so many archaic courts if
Speaker 1: you're reading or performing Shakespeare that you can't stop to wonder. Overall,
Speaker 1: it's enough to be like, okay, this means drinking vessel. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the next strange word that doesn't quite register for me?
Speaker 1: Let me translate that one in my head. But this
Speaker 1: is a if you can actually look up examples of
Speaker 1: this vessel online the pauset this posse e t, and
Speaker 1: you'll find that some of the main examples of this
Speaker 1: it looks curiously like an ornate teapot with handles on
Speaker 1: both sides, a wide lidded aperture at the top, with
Speaker 1: a with a with a lid on top, and the
Speaker 1: stem for it, you know, like that like a tea kettle.
Speaker 1: It feeds from the bottom of the vessel rather than
Speaker 1: from the middle or the top of the vessel. M HM.
Speaker 1: The reason for this design, according to Brayman is that
Speaker 1: you can drink directly from the stem to get at
Speaker 1: the liquid contents of the of the of the liquid
Speaker 1: it contains, but also you can take the lid off
Speaker 1: the top and go at the top of it with
Speaker 1: a spoon, because basically you're gonna have a mixture of things.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a fluid beneath in kind of a
Speaker 1: chonky chonky, creamy perhaps cheesy layer at the top.
Speaker 3: So this is like it's like a curdled milk drink
Speaker 3: that has that has cheesy, floaty solid bits on the
Speaker 3: top you want to get with a spoon.
Speaker 1: Yes, the way that Brayman describes it is quote both
Speaker 1: a drink and a dessert with a layer of thick,
Speaker 1: sweet gruel floating above the liquid. Okay, so okay. On
Speaker 1: one hand, I realized that could potentially be interpreted as gross,
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I think it's not that
Speaker 1: different from a lot of sort of frothy dessert things
Speaker 1: we have today. I think about certain milkshakes, certain smoothies,
Speaker 1: certainly especially the older school cappuccinos, where the foam cap
Speaker 1: on top was maybe a little firmer, and you might
Speaker 1: have to go at that with a spoon as opposed
Speaker 1: to drinking it. So I kind of reject the idea
Speaker 1: that this potential hygiene issues aside of late medieval ages,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is necessarily that gross of an
Speaker 1: idea that you could have some sort of like a
Speaker 1: thick portion on the top of your beverage that requires
Speaker 1: a spoon. It's just like a little different to imagine
Speaker 1: this bizarre container for its consumption. Though nowadays I do
Speaker 1: want to point out we do have things like the
Speaker 1: spoon straw, which is like a plastic usually like a
Speaker 1: plastic straw and spoon combined so that you can do both.
Speaker 1: They did not have this technology in the late medieval
Speaker 1: period to my knowledge. Therefore they had to use a passet.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it is the same principle as a straw,
Speaker 3: which I don't find unusual. But I have to say,
Speaker 3: it is funny to imagine somebody like drinking out of
Speaker 3: the stem of a tea kettle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it does seem like you might burn your
Speaker 1: mouth with this. So recorded recipes, many of these came later.
Speaker 1: I believe they called if you were going to fill
Speaker 1: the pauset, it would call for a great deal of
Speaker 1: egg and cream. They might also call for beer, sugar,
Speaker 1: and also thickening agents such as bread, biscuits, oatmeal, and
Speaker 1: almond paste. In some cases, the upper portions are said
Speaker 1: to take on a cheesey quality, which actually brings to
Speaker 1: mind modern cheese milk tea drinks, which are quite delightful.
Speaker 1: If you haven't had one, I know this is something
Speaker 1: that can be kind of hard to imagine. Why should
Speaker 1: my milk tea taste like cheese? Well, it's it's not
Speaker 1: what you're imagining. If you're imagining something that turns your stomach.
Speaker 1: It's not like chatdar cheese on the top of your tea.
Speaker 1: It's something sweetier and creamier, but with that slight cheesy twist.
Speaker 3: To it, not like provolone.
Speaker 1: Right right now. I should also mention there are more
Speaker 1: contemporary pauset dishes, such as you often see recipes for
Speaker 1: something called a lemon pausset, but this seems somewhat more
Speaker 1: refined compared to what is described here. This is not
Speaker 1: something you drink out of a strange tea kettle. It's
Speaker 1: something you spoon out of a dish. But is it eggnog? Well,
Speaker 1: in many ways, if not most ways, no. But it
Speaker 1: also sounds like the sort of thing that if you
Speaker 1: were a time traveler from an eggnog having culture and
Speaker 1: you went back to the late Midi Ages and you're like,
Speaker 1: where's my eggnog and people are like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? You might discover the posset and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: well this will work, this will do. Now my holiday
Speaker 1: is complete.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a liquidy egg and milk or egg and
Speaker 3: cream type thing.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think it's not crazy to imagine that
Speaker 1: this sort of precedent for this sort of drink and
Speaker 1: the sort of taste sensations that it brings about, that
Speaker 1: this could feed into the very American traditions that would,
Speaker 1: according to Thomas, bring about the American eggnog.
Speaker 3: So I assume after we get out of this early
Speaker 3: period where mentions are scarce and don't really explain much
Speaker 3: about eggnog except like the Irish guy who's clearly not
Speaker 3: familiar with it, we get into a period where there
Speaker 3: is more extensive writing on eggnog, maybe like in actual
Speaker 3: cookery manuals.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot more material once you was
Speaker 1: a certain point, And Wondrich has a whole chapter on
Speaker 1: egg drinks In his book in by Is, he writes
Speaker 1: it there quote neither punches nor part of the lineage
Speaker 1: of cocktails, and this is also somewhat how Jerry Thomas
Speaker 1: and the people of his day would have classified them.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really amazed me about all this, though,
Speaker 1: is that Wondredge points out that egg drinks were once
Speaker 1: far more common and kind of a daily affair, but
Speaker 1: that few survive today. This kind of comes back to
Speaker 1: your example earlier about egg nog for breakfast, why not perfect,
Speaker 1: keep the fog away, etc. Now, now I should point
Speaker 1: out this is the two thousand and seven books, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we've seen anything in the way
Speaker 1: of a resurgence of egg drinks. It might be the case, though,
Speaker 1: given the spirit of cocktail making and it's tend to
Speaker 1: re explore older fashions and even remake them with modern twists,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like it's tremendously uncommon to find at
Speaker 1: least a single egg drink on a fancy cocktail menu,
Speaker 1: though to be sure, you probably won't find them on
Speaker 1: just random restaurant cocktail menus, like I don't know if
Speaker 1: Chili's offers an egg drink.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think, what are the standard egg drinks
Speaker 3: other Well, I guess there are like drinks I don't
Speaker 3: usually get, but like, aren't there like sours and fizzes
Speaker 3: and stuff that have egg whites in them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wondred points out that the major survivors include the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century Tom and Jerry drink. This would be not
Speaker 1: getting into the proportions, but it's like sugar, eggs rum, cinnamon, cloves, allspice.
Speaker 1: There's the sherry flip, which is basically egg, sugar and sherry,
Speaker 1: and he discusses his elsewhere in the book. But of
Speaker 1: course there's the Ramos gin Fizz, which is pretty famous
Speaker 1: New Orleans drink that contains gin, simple syrup, lemon juice,
Speaker 1: lime juice, egg white, heavy cream, orange flower water, and
Speaker 1: club soda. It's one that famously requires a great deal
Speaker 1: of shaking. You may receive a dirty look from the
Speaker 1: bartender when you order it because of all the shaking
Speaker 1: it's going to require. Sometimes they have to pass it
Speaker 1: off to another bartender to continue shake shaking it. But
Speaker 1: it is also a delightful drink. But yeah, he Wonderage
Speaker 1: points out though that that even though we only have
Speaker 1: so many egg drinks that kind of survived. There was
Speaker 1: this time where where egg based drinks, egg egg based
Speaker 1: alcoholic drinks were consumed on pretty much a daily basis
Speaker 1: and were as popular as eggnog drinks are during the
Speaker 1: holiday year round. So just imagine, imagine a world in
Speaker 1: which eggnog is stocked at the grocery store year round
Speaker 1: to meet people's demand for it, and everybody's having it
Speaker 1: boozed up. Not that they bought it at the grocery store,
Speaker 1: they made it. You get my point.
Speaker 3: That's that sounds like a magical time, a very rich,
Speaker 3: rich time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But as Paul Clark points out in the Imbibed
Speaker 1: magazine article elements egg cocktails, changing tases and salmonella scares
Speaker 1: pretty much chased raw eggs out of the bar. And
Speaker 1: this would be kind of this would be the reason
Speaker 1: that only so many egg drinks kind of survived this
Speaker 1: period of time in which, on one hand, yet changing taste.
Speaker 1: You can imagine, perhaps you know, there are new fads
Speaker 1: in cocktails, new ingredients are more readily available for cocktails,
Speaker 1: and then there's this whole issue of salmonella.
Speaker 3: Salmonella concerns, of course, remain relevant to this day, and
Speaker 3: we'll come back to those in just a few minutes now.
Speaker 1: Wonder Ch also points out there was a great deal
Speaker 1: of variation when it came to eggnog recipes, which I
Speaker 1: imagine is going to be the case with any popular drink,
Speaker 1: even if the recipe isn't secret. See the invention episode
Speaker 1: we did about the my Tie for examples of this.
Speaker 1: On both counts. If the recipe is secret, people are
Speaker 1: going to try and recreate it. And even if the
Speaker 1: secret is if there's no secret, if the recipe is
Speaker 1: well known, you're going to end up having deviations anyway.
Speaker 1: For instance, anywhere you go today the my Thie recipe,
Speaker 1: there's no telling what a restaurant will actually serve you
Speaker 1: if you order a my tie, even though the original
Speaker 1: recipe is very well known at this point, or it's
Speaker 1: it's very easily obtained if you have a desire to
Speaker 1: seek it out. But these regional differences in eggnog, this
Speaker 1: would this would really make people emotional. Wonderd show points
Speaker 1: out this account where there's a judge who encountered eggnog
Speaker 1: in an inn and it didn't have whiskey enough in it,
Speaker 1: and therefore there was this huge altercation.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean again, going back to stories about ends.
Speaker 3: You don't say what time of day this is, but
Speaker 3: this eggnog might have been his morning eggnog, which sets
Speaker 3: the tone for the entire day. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: if you don't get your coffee right in the morning,
Speaker 3: that's that's bad news.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If I don't get my heavily alcoholic eggnog in
Speaker 1: the morning, I'm just I'm no good now. Sometimes those
Speaker 1: regional differences, though, are going to be entirely based on
Speaker 1: what is available to you. And a great example of
Speaker 1: this is the Texian version of eggnog includesive recipe in
Speaker 1: the book it is It stems. It stems from General
Speaker 1: Thomas Green of the Army of the Texas Republic from
Speaker 1: a teen forty three. The recipe serves about one hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty. It calls for seven gallons of mes cow,
Speaker 1: seven gallons of donkey milk, thirty dozen eggs, and a
Speaker 1: large loaf of sugar.
Speaker 3: I love that sugar used to come in loaves.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, if you're making eggnog for one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty and a number of these recipes do call for
Speaker 1: large vats of eggnog. But this this is quite a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, seven gallons of mezcal, seven gallons of donkey milk.
Speaker 3: I've never tasted donkey milk. I don't even know.
Speaker 1: What that would be like. I again two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven book, But Wondrich mentioned that donkey milk was becoming
Speaker 1: popular at the time in Europe due to this. I
Speaker 1: supposedly it had some health advantages to it. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true. I don't know if it's still
Speaker 1: popular as an alternative milk. I don't think I've seen
Speaker 1: it in myself in health feed stores. But then again,
Speaker 1: I'm not really in the market for donkey milk anyway. Well,
Speaker 1: Wondrich roughly translates the recipe for modern drinkers in that book.
Speaker 1: He of course says you can use cow milk instead
Speaker 1: of donkey milk, and he also recommends grating a little
Speaker 1: chocolate on top. So Jerry Thomas apparently chronicled six different
Speaker 1: eggnog recipes, and wonder Rich includes recipes for three of
Speaker 1: them in his book. Roughly speaking, these are the contents
Speaker 1: of these three that he shares. There's Baltimore eggnog, eggs, sugar, nutmeg,
Speaker 1: brandy or rum wine, egg whites, and milk. There's eggnog individual,
Speaker 1: which calls for sugar, cold water, egg, cognac, Santa Cruz,
Speaker 1: rum and milk. And then there's General Harrison's agnog. This
Speaker 1: is ninth American President William Henry Harrison, and this was
Speaker 1: said to be one of his favorites. It called for egg, sugar,
Speaker 1: hard cider, and lumps of ice. Important to note here
Speaker 1: that cider drinking was part of his brand. His whole
Speaker 1: image that he tried to put out was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not really at home in this Washington environment. I just
Speaker 1: want to sit on the porch and drink some hard sider.
Speaker 1: Won't you have some of my hardsider based eggnog and
Speaker 1: vote for me? Yeah?
Speaker 3: That was him saying like, I'm just a you know,
Speaker 3: a hard working frontiersman. I'm not one of these elites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I I appreciate hardsider,
Speaker 1: but this sounds horrific. I don't think I would I
Speaker 1: would want any part of this. So General Harrison, no,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 3: General Harrison also died about some like thirty days into
Speaker 3: his first presidential term from Yeah, he's the one who
Speaker 3: he didn't really make it very far, and their speculation
Speaker 3: about why he died, But one of them is that
Speaker 3: he may have succumbed to the fact that the water
Speaker 3: supply at the White House at the time was heavily
Speaker 3: contaminated with raw sewage.
Speaker 1: Huh. Interesting. I had a whole tangent for this episode
Speaker 1: about twelfth US President Zachary Taylor, who fell ill with
Speaker 1: a fatal illness on July fourth of eighteen fifty after
Speaker 1: a DC fundraiser that he attended where he quote drank
Speaker 1: freely of iced water and chilled milk, according to biographer k.
Speaker 1: Jack Bauer in the book Zachary Taylor's Soldier, Planter, Statesman
Speaker 1: of the Old Southwest. So I've seen this described as
Speaker 1: copious amounts of cherries and iced milk. Apparently he preferred
Speaker 1: drinking chilled milk. That was his thing. That was the
Speaker 1: hardest drink that Zachary Taylor was known to imbibe himself.
Speaker 1: But I cut most of this out because he wasn't
Speaker 1: drinking as far as I can tell, a cherry chilled
Speaker 1: milk concoction. It was just chilled milk and then also
Speaker 1: a lot of cherries.
Speaker 3: And probably plenty of raw sewage.
Speaker 1: Is it time for salmonella?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's a great transition, so eggs salmonella. Salmonella
Speaker 3: remains probably the main reason people have reservations about raw
Speaker 3: egg based food and drinks today. Salmonella is a genus
Speaker 3: of bacteria named not after salmon the fish, but after
Speaker 3: an American veterinarian named Daniel Elmer Salmon. Though it was
Speaker 3: not discovered by him, it was named after him basically
Speaker 3: because a species of Salmonella was discovered by an assistant
Speaker 3: in a lab who worked for salmon. The assistant's name
Speaker 3: was Theobald Smith, but of course the boss gets all
Speaker 3: the glory. Some zero types of salmonella are responsible for
Speaker 3: really serious and historically significant diseases such as typhoid fever,
Speaker 3: but multiple types of salmonilla will result in infections of
Speaker 3: the intestinal tract. So salmonilla infection or salmonellosis, is one
Speaker 3: of the most common food born illnesses, often characterized by fever, diarrhea,
Speaker 3: severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, and headache. And because salmonilla
Speaker 3: is often transmitted through the fecal oral route, the risk
Speaker 3: of contracting it is higher when people don't have access
Speaker 3: to clean drinking water and effective sewage disposal. Though, salmonella
Speaker 3: can also be transmitted between animals and humans, so animal vectors,
Speaker 3: such as eggs from infected chickens, can be a major
Speaker 3: source of salmonellosis in humans as well. Now, on the
Speaker 3: other hand, one thing to remember is that most eggs
Speaker 3: are fine. Most eggs are not infected with salmonilla. I
Speaker 3: don't know what the exact proportion is, but one figure
Speaker 3: I saw kicking around from the two thousands was a
Speaker 3: CDC estimate that roughly one in every twenty thousand chicken
Speaker 3: eggs in the United States was contaminated. That number may
Speaker 3: be different today. If so, it's probably somewhat lower than that.
Speaker 3: But you know, I'm not say saying you should go
Speaker 3: about eating raw eggs. There is definitely risk there, but
Speaker 3: also like the odds are pretty low that any given
Speaker 3: egg is going to make you sick. Also, eggs are
Speaker 3: fine if you cook them to the proper temperature for
Speaker 3: the proper time. One hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit will
Speaker 3: kill just about anything instantly. Also, you know, even lower temperatures,
Speaker 3: if held for a sufficient amount of time, will be
Speaker 3: enough to basically sterilize eggs. This is you can look
Speaker 3: up charts on the amount of time eggs need to
Speaker 3: spend at a certain temperature in order to make them safe. However,
Speaker 3: eggnog is traditionally not made with eggs that are cooked
Speaker 3: at all, but rather with raw ones. So is there
Speaker 3: any risk, Well, yes, obviously if you are just drinking
Speaker 3: raw eggs straight up, there is some risk of salmonilla infection.
Speaker 3: One example of this, I mean it happens all the time,
Speaker 3: but one example, one case study I dug up with
Speaker 3: an interesting secondary finding. This is a study published in
Speaker 3: The Lancet in nineteen seventy five by steer at All
Speaker 3: called person to person spread of Salmonella typhimurium after a
Speaker 3: hospital common source outbreak. So the abstract reads, in September
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three, diarrhea caused by Salmonella typhemurium developed in
Speaker 3: thirty two people in a main hospital. Both epidemiological and
Speaker 3: microbiological evidence indicated that raw egg beaten in milk for
Speaker 3: eggnog was responsible for the infection. However, six patients and
Speaker 3: eight employees had not had eggnog, and their illness developed
Speaker 3: after the source of infection had been recognized and removed.
Speaker 3: Most of these people had had direct contact with an
Speaker 3: infected patient and presumably acquired the infection by person to
Speaker 3: person spread. It's concluded that person to person spread of
Speaker 3: Salmonilla typhemurium can occur in hospitals in Cambia hazard to
Speaker 3: patients and staff. So initially a bunch of people in
Speaker 3: the hospital got salmonella from drinking eggnog, but then those
Speaker 3: people gave secondary infections to others who didn't even touch
Speaker 3: the nog. Also, I wanted to share another medical journal
Speaker 3: article I found just because I thought it was very weird.
Speaker 3: This is called Eyelid absess in an Eggnog Drinker by
Speaker 3: Marcus and Wolverson, published in the British Medical Journal nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine. Short story is a seventy two year old
Speaker 3: man showed up at a hospital in England with a
Speaker 3: huge abscess swelling on his left upper eyelid, which they
Speaker 3: eventually determined had spread to an infection of the bone
Speaker 3: in his forehead, the bone above where his eye was.
Speaker 3: So he was put under general anesthesia and the absess
Speaker 3: was drained. They did a culture of the pus and
Speaker 3: it revealed the presence of a type of salmonella. They
Speaker 3: eventually did another procedure to take care of the swelling
Speaker 3: in the bones of the face, and he eventually made
Speaker 3: a full recovery. The man had no gastrointestinal symptoms, and
Speaker 3: the authors say that there had been recent cases of
Speaker 3: salmonilla infection related to eggs, so they asked him about
Speaker 3: his diet, and here I'm going to read from the
Speaker 3: case report. His diet consisted of West Indian and European food,
Speaker 3: but he said that he cooked all eggs well. When
Speaker 3: he was seen in the outpatient department, he was specifically
Speaker 3: asked if he drank eggnog, and he then admitted drinking
Speaker 3: it frequently, using a recipe of raw eggs, brandy, sugar, milk,
Speaker 3: and vanilla essence. Now, the authors say they could find
Speaker 3: no previous evidence of this particular type of salmonella causing
Speaker 3: an eyelid absess, but that there are other known cases
Speaker 3: of this bacterial infection spreading from a gut infection originally
Speaker 3: to a secondary infection elsewhere in the body, such as
Speaker 3: in the bones, actually the long bones, especially in patients
Speaker 3: with underlying medical conditions and in patients over seventy years
Speaker 3: of age. And finally, the author's write quote, from nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one to nineteen eighty six, the proportion of salmonella
Speaker 3: infections caused by salmonella, and then they're talking about a
Speaker 3: specific type here, Salmonella in teriditis rose from eleven percent
Speaker 3: to twenty eight percent. This rise was due mainly to
Speaker 3: a rise in phage type four infections. Transmission of this
Speaker 3: phage type has been increasingly associated with poultry, and it
Speaker 3: is now known to be transmitted in eggs. Egg born
Speaker 3: Salmonilla in teroditis is destroyed by thorough cooking. The raw
Speaker 3: egg in the eggnog may have been the vehicle of infection.
Speaker 3: Unless specifically asked for, a history of eggnog drinking may
Speaker 3: not emerge on dietary questioning. But okay, now, I'm sure
Speaker 3: a lot of people out there are wondering, Wait a minute. Okay, obviously,
Speaker 3: you know you mix up a bunch of raw eggs
Speaker 3: and you just drink that, that definitely is putting you
Speaker 3: at risk. But if you put alcohol in the eggnog,
Speaker 3: surely that would be safe. Right? Doesn't alcohol kill germs?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And we're talking a lot of alcohol in some
Speaker 1: of these recipes.
Speaker 3: Now, frustratingly, I have not been able to put together
Speaker 3: a very clear answer on the exact relationship between alcohol
Speaker 3: content and raw egg safety. Instead, I've sort of assembled
Speaker 3: some different conflicting data points, but I'll share a few
Speaker 3: of the results I came across. So one thing I
Speaker 3: found is a study in the International Journal of Food
Speaker 3: Microbiology published in nineteen ninety called survival of pathogenic micro
Speaker 3: organisms in an eggnog like product containing seven percent ethanol.
Speaker 3: This is by notermans at all, so this is a
Speaker 3: lab test. They say, let's make some boozy eggnog and
Speaker 3: direct inject pathogenic microorganisms in there and see what happens.
Speaker 3: So they say a liquor consisting of whole egg sacros
Speaker 3: meaning sugar twenty five percent and ethanol of seven percent
Speaker 3: was artificially contaminated with Salmonella teriditis, Salmonilla, typhomurium, Staphylococcus aureus,
Speaker 3: three different strains, Basillus sirius, and Listeria. And they say,
Speaker 3: after three weeks of incubation at twenty two degrees celsius,
Speaker 3: twenty two degrees celsius is about seventy one degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 3: room temperature, the numbers of salmonilla, Staphylococcus aureus and and
Speaker 3: of the Listeria species they use decreased by more than
Speaker 3: three log base ten units, and if I understand correctly,
Speaker 3: I believe that's a ninety nine point nine percent reduction
Speaker 3: in the number of bacteria units. There they say under
Speaker 3: such conditions, however, the total number of my microorganisms increased
Speaker 3: three log ten units. Then they say at four degrees celsius,
Speaker 3: So I think this would be simulating refrigerator temperatures. The
Speaker 3: decrease of pathogenic microorganisms was much slower, and a decrease
Speaker 3: of three log based ten units was observed only after
Speaker 3: seven weeks of incubation. So this study finds eggnog without
Speaker 3: alcohol incubated at room temperature. Yeah, that's you allow populations
Speaker 3: of salmonilla and staff to explode. But in this study,
Speaker 3: the presence of seven percent straight ethanol significantly reduced the
Speaker 3: amount of salmonilla, at staff and listeria over the course
Speaker 3: of three weeks at room temperature and over the course
Speaker 3: of seven weeks at fridge temperature. However, other microorganisms can grow.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure this recipe for egnog that they used
Speaker 1: is the doctor cushion catheter right recipe for agnog with
Speaker 1: all of these added diseases.
Speaker 3: M you can just imagine Christopher Lee drooling over it
Speaker 3: while the Stanton Twins dance. But the amount of alcohol
Speaker 3: clearly matters. One highly cited informal experiment. This was not
Speaker 3: published in a scientific journal as far as I can tell,
Speaker 3: but it was done and reported on by NPR for
Speaker 3: Science Friday. It was done in the late two thousands
Speaker 3: by microbiologists at the at Rockefeller University named Vince Faschetti
Speaker 3: and Raymond Schuck, and it was covered on Science Friday.
Speaker 3: And apparently these researchers used a recipe that the staff
Speaker 3: at the university would make every year, which originally traced
Speaker 3: back to the great American microbiologist Rebecca Lancefield. So this
Speaker 3: is her original eggnog recipe. She had worked at Rockefeller
Speaker 3: University decades earlier. Apparently they're still making her eggnog years
Speaker 3: after she passed away. And the recipe includes raw eggs
Speaker 3: but also cream, sugar, and a lot of hard liquor.
Speaker 3: The liquors in this version are bourbon and rum. NPR
Speaker 3: reported that the alcohol concentration of the final drink was
Speaker 3: about twenty percent. And the way they would do it
Speaker 3: is every year they'd make it before Thanksgiving and then
Speaker 3: enjoy it around Christmas time. So it had an incubation
Speaker 3: period in the refrigerator of about six weeks. So for
Speaker 3: this experiment, the researchers made their usual knog, but they
Speaker 3: deliberately spiked it once again with salmonilla. Just you can
Speaker 3: watch a video of this. They're just injecting this orange
Speaker 3: juice into the eggs. It's disgusting, they say. They put
Speaker 3: in the amount of salmonella you would expect from including
Speaker 3: about somewhere between one and ten contaminated eggs, and then
Speaker 3: they took samples at various stages of preparation and incubation
Speaker 3: to see what grew over the course of the next
Speaker 3: three weeks. So egg plus salmonella with no alcohol, that's
Speaker 3: just it formed a solid mat of salmony, just huge boom,
Speaker 3: millions of bacteria. Disgusting.
Speaker 1: Hey, you can need your spoon and your posset for that.
Speaker 3: One ugh egg plus salmonilla plus alcohol with the sample
Speaker 3: taken immediately after mixing give you a modest reduction, but
Speaker 3: still plenty of salmonilla growth. This would still absolutely make
Speaker 3: you sick. Egg plus salmonella plus alcohol, but one day
Speaker 3: after mixing, still plenty of salmonilla, but less than the
Speaker 3: one taken right after mixing. One week later, there was
Speaker 3: noticeably less bacterial growth, but they said, still probably enough
Speaker 3: to make you sick. But then the sample from three
Speaker 3: weeks later there's nothing, no bacterial growth at all. So
Speaker 3: somewhere between one week and three weeks this batch went
Speaker 3: from biohazard to presumably safe. Though I noticed that the
Speaker 3: Science Friday report made a joke about like the researchers
Speaker 3: themselves are joking about this. They said, you know, we
Speaker 3: could really commit to our result and just drink it,
Speaker 3: but maybe not, which makes sense, right, like why risk it?
Speaker 3: And that kind of spirit comes through in a lot
Speaker 3: of the other sources I've seen talking about whether alcohol
Speaker 3: will render your eggnog safe, because it seems clear there's
Speaker 3: evidence that at least in some cases, even if you
Speaker 3: got unlucky enough in got a contaminated egg, given enough
Speaker 3: alcohol and enough time, the nog would probably be safe.
Speaker 3: But there are a lot of variables here, and so
Speaker 3: it seems like a bunch of public health and food
Speaker 3: safety sources are still cautious they're still kind of cagy
Speaker 3: about giving the green light on this, and they default
Speaker 3: to saying that if you want to be sure you're safe,
Speaker 3: you should use pasteurized eggs from a carton which have
Speaker 3: been rendered safe by preheating in the facility where they
Speaker 3: were packaged, or they also recommend cooking the eggs. Basically
Speaker 3: like sources citing experts at the FDA or the USDA
Speaker 3: say that you can't always count on alcohol to kill
Speaker 3: potential bacterial content of raw eggs, and if you want
Speaker 3: to be safe, the eggs should be cooked. You can
Speaker 3: do this by like mixing the eggs and milk together
Speaker 3: and gently bringing up to one hundred and sixty degrees
Speaker 3: fahrenheit while stirring to kill any possible bacterial content before
Speaker 3: you add the other ingredients. So personally, I don't know
Speaker 3: exactly where we are left here. I will say it
Speaker 3: looks like some experiments do show that alcohol content will
Speaker 3: at least often, maybe not always, but will at least
Speaker 3: often neutralize the main bacteria that people are worried about,
Speaker 3: meaning salmonilla, given enough alcohol and enough time. And I
Speaker 3: will say that I also just speaking for myself, not
Speaker 3: giving advice to other people. Have personally drunk eggnog made
Speaker 3: in this way with raw eggs but with lots of
Speaker 3: alcohol content, and personally I felt fine about it. But
Speaker 3: it also looks like some experts still have concerns that
Speaker 3: this might not always work, and caution that if you
Speaker 3: want to make sure you're safe, you should cook your
Speaker 3: eggs or use a past your eye product.
Speaker 1: I mean this is also enough to make one rethink
Speaker 1: eating raw cookie dough and so forth.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, well, it's true, I guess of
Speaker 3: anything with raw eggs in it, like, there is always
Speaker 3: some small amount of risk. You know, some small proportion
Speaker 3: of eggs out there are going to be infected. Most
Speaker 3: eggs are fine, but some are going to have salmonella
Speaker 3: in them, So you're always running that risk. And I guess,
Speaker 3: I guess some of the difficulty comes from not just
Speaker 3: whether or not you will accept the risk, but from
Speaker 3: not knowing exactly how risky it is. Like you can't
Speaker 3: come up, you don't have a number, you know, to say, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I have this percent chance of getting salmonilla if I
Speaker 3: do this. Instead, you just have a vague sense that
Speaker 3: I have some small chance, and I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: what that chance is.
Speaker 1: But in a way, that's it's the holiday season. It's
Speaker 1: about it's about thinking about your chances of surviving a
Speaker 1: winter festivity that is supposed to get you through the
Speaker 1: darkest portion of the year and hopefully see about the
Speaker 1: resurrection of the living world.
Speaker 3: That's quite beautifully put. But on the other hand, I'll
Speaker 3: just say, like, you know, if you're not your yeah,
Speaker 3: just cook your eggs or just use the past yourized thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fine now. Last year on Stuft to
Speaker 1: blow your mind, we did an entire episode looking at
Speaker 1: the major award leg lamp from a Christmas Story, the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties holiday classic film, and you know, looking at
Speaker 1: this leg shaped lamp and finding predecessors to this in
Speaker 1: the ancient world. In a similar way, I would like
Speaker 1: to at the close of this episode on eggnog, consider
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty nine holiday film Christmas Vacation, which of
Speaker 1: course starred a great cast Chevy Chase, Beverly Dangelo, Randy Quaid,
Speaker 1: among others. But there are at least a couple of
Speaker 1: key scenes in this movie in which the Griswold family
Speaker 1: drinks eggnog from glass goblets made in the likeness of
Speaker 1: the Wally World moose. These are you can actually buy
Speaker 1: these now, this is an actual product. But in the
Speaker 1: movie they are these little glass goblets and they have
Speaker 1: big glass moose antlers on either side, and there's a
Speaker 1: big droopy moose snout on the front. You hold it
Speaker 1: by the ear and you sip your eggnog that way,
Speaker 1: or you gulp it, as it happens to be the
Speaker 1: case in some of the scenes.
Speaker 3: I imagine the moose face has to be facing out or
Speaker 3: else the snout would sort of prevent you from from
Speaker 3: getting it to your lips.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you'd have to hold the glass in just
Speaker 1: the right way. It's a ceremonial vessel. And I started
Speaker 1: looking around as thinking, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's going to be something in the ancient world
Speaker 1: that matches up with this. But luckily, once more, eighties
Speaker 1: holiday movie prop design is in line with the manufacture
Speaker 1: of artifacts in the ancient world. I would like to
Speaker 1: discuss the ryton. This is generally spelled r hytn and
Speaker 1: it is a style of head cup that appears in
Speaker 1: various forms throughout the ancient world. According to Mara abd
Speaker 1: El Maghwud al Kadi in Forms and Functions of rytons
Speaker 1: in Ptotomaic Egypt. According to this author, they were likely
Speaker 1: Persian in origin and were particularly popular during the Achaemenid
Speaker 1: dynasty of five point fifty through three point thirty PCE.
Speaker 1: You can look up images of the ryton and the
Speaker 1: various versions of the ryton that appear in different times
Speaker 1: and different cultures. One can roughly compare these to a
Speaker 1: drinking horn, like you know, the hollowed horn of a beast,
Speaker 1: but the design and function here is a little more involved.
Speaker 1: So imagine a drinking horn in which the slender part
Speaker 1: of the horn, the tapering part of the horn is
Speaker 1: in the likeness of an animal's head or in the
Speaker 1: front half of an animal. And we don't have time
Speaker 1: in this episode to really dig into the variation and
Speaker 1: the different cultural takes in this episode. But again, this
Speaker 1: would have been a realistic drinking vessel. This would not
Speaker 1: be something you would bust out, I would imagine for
Speaker 1: your just everyday consumption. This would be for ceremonial drinking.
Speaker 1: And there are essentially two types of ryton. In one form,
Speaker 1: you drink from the slender part of the ryton holding
Speaker 1: it above one's head or roughly you know, above one's head,
Speaker 1: or at least parallel with one's head, by either twin
Speaker 1: handles on the side, or from some other kind of
Speaker 1: handle that's a fixed to the object, or even from
Speaker 1: sort of the horn itself. In other forms, one drinks
Speaker 1: from the wide portion of the ryton, So the whole
Speaker 1: thing is more like a traditional goblet, except many of
Speaker 1: these designs would require you know, gripping by the horns
Speaker 1: or by the or the antlers that are on it.
Speaker 1: If there are antlers on it, and you might not
Speaker 1: be able to set it down, it may not might
Speaker 1: not have a bottom to it.
Speaker 3: Wow, well, that almost suggests a certain way to drink.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again this would be highly ritual, So it's
Speaker 1: not about setting your drink aside and then doing other things.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna do any paperwork. This is probably part
Speaker 1: of some ritual I don't know. You can easily imagine
Speaker 1: some sort of warrior's feast, etc.
Speaker 3: Right, you can't drink it while you're podcasting. It's maybe
Speaker 3: to drink from while people stand around you chanting drink.
Speaker 1: Right. So there are various beautiful examples of the ryton,
Speaker 1: but The one that really brought to my mind the
Speaker 1: Wally World mug is the Stag's head Ryton, dating to
Speaker 1: four hundred BCE. This is a silver artifact that actually
Speaker 1: made headlines just last year due to its three point
Speaker 1: five million dollar appraisal value and its presence among stolen
Speaker 1: antiquities that were found in the possession of billionaire Michael Steinhardt.
Speaker 1: You can look up articles on that again from just
Speaker 1: last year. The item was apparently looted from a museum
Speaker 1: in Turkey originally, but I'm unsure exactly when the looting occurred,
Speaker 1: other than sometime during the twentieth century during a time
Speaker 1: of unrest, which that only narrows it down so much
Speaker 1: concerning the twentieth century, though. It does seem to be
Speaker 1: of ancient Greek manufacturer somewhere in the region of the
Speaker 1: Black Sea, probably from the fifth century BCE. And with
Speaker 1: this one, you'd apparently drink from the stag's lower lip
Speaker 1: while holding it aloft, though not by the antlers, as
Speaker 1: is visible in many photos of this particular artifact. There's
Speaker 1: this curved handle behind the neck.
Speaker 3: Oh, I see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the question remains, is the Wally World mug
Speaker 1: a ryton. No, it's not. No, it's not. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: first of all, it's not horn shaped. It also doesn't
Speaker 1: you don't drink from the moose's lips, though that alone
Speaker 1: wouldn't disqualify it from being a ryton, as we previously noted,
Speaker 1: though I've included a picture for you, Joe, of a
Speaker 1: ryton that would involve you drinking from the wide portion
Speaker 1: as opposed to the beast lips. You can sort of see.
Speaker 1: So this one would be very much a situation where
Speaker 1: you have this kind of like I don't know, bronze
Speaker 1: or golden chalice, and you wouldn't be able to set
Speaker 1: it down because instead of having a flat surface, flat
Speaker 1: bottom on the bottom of your goblet, there is like
Speaker 1: the head of a ram down there. Yeah, so you'd
Speaker 1: have to lay it on its side, I guess, in
Speaker 1: which case you would either spill what you were drinking
Speaker 1: or you would have to have consumed it all.
Speaker 3: Once again, the medium is the message here. This is
Speaker 3: technology that shows that by necessity, shows you a way
Speaker 3: to use it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. However, I will say the Wally World mug is
Speaker 1: the likeness of a moosehead. It is the likeness of
Speaker 1: an animal's head. It also is a ceremonial drinking vessel. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the Grizwolds are not drinking out of these year round,
Speaker 1: They're busting them out for the holidays. And just as
Speaker 1: some of these artifacts, such as the stag, were decorated
Speaker 1: with warrior images and images of battle, and we can
Speaker 1: imagine the ceremonies they involve, probably a line with some
Speaker 1: sort of warrior ethos. We do see Clark Griswold drinking
Speaker 1: copious amounts of nog while working cousin Eddie up for violence,
Speaker 1: though curiously I had to go back. I was imagining this,
Speaker 1: remembering this scene incorrectly, the scene where Clark Griswold is
Speaker 1: throwing back a whole bunch of eggnog and talking about
Speaker 1: how he wishes somebody would kidnap his boss. He's curiously
Speaker 1: not drinking from one of the moose goblets in this scene.
Speaker 1: Oh so, I don't know. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: reason for that is. You'd think you'd want him drinking
Speaker 1: out of the moose. Maybe it's just because it's harder
Speaker 1: to hold. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's to show in a subtle way that Clark
Speaker 3: is actually coldly calculating in the scene, and he's not
Speaker 3: as drunk as it would suggest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a whole topic for another time, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out Clark Griswold. How do we feel about Clark Griswold,
Speaker 1: about his his motivations and his desires in Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 3: Clark is neutral, evil cousin cousin Randy Quaid, I'd say chaotic.
Speaker 1: Neutral, Yeah, I think so. All right, So again, not
Speaker 1: really a Ryton in Christmas Vacation. But I think we
Speaker 1: might well imagine a scene from an alternate dimension in
Speaker 1: which there's a scene in Christmas Vacation in which Clark
Speaker 1: Griswold holds aloft the Mighty Wally the moose Ryton, this
Speaker 1: big glass moose head or perhaps it's silver in this scenario,
Speaker 1: a big silver moosehead. Perhaps you grip it by the antlers,
Speaker 1: and he's allowing cousin Eddie to then drink nourishing nod
Speaker 1: from the lips of the moose before he sends him
Speaker 1: out into glorious battle against the enemies of Christmas. Bravo.
Speaker 1: All right, that's all I have.
Speaker 3: God bless us everyone, Yes, I.
Speaker 1: Will say, also, fortunately finished my eggnog before we got
Speaker 1: to the draining of abscesses. So hopefully that calibrates the
Speaker 1: podcast episode for anyone out there who's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Rob's having an eggnog, I should have an eggnog for
Speaker 1: this listening experience. I hope that you too, were finished
Speaker 1: before the abscesses were drained.
Speaker 3: Why are you saying that, Rob? Are you saying that?
Speaker 3: Otherwise it would suggest the mental image that your glass
Speaker 3: of creamy mixture is what's out coming out of the abscess.
Speaker 1: Yes, that it is a goblet of holiday puss, which
Speaker 1: you might be drinking from the glass ahead of a moose,
Speaker 1: which doesn't help, or from the lips of a moose.
Speaker 3: Right on, I guess Merry Christmas everybody.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, we're going to go and close it
Speaker 1: out here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out
Speaker 1: there if you have. I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: out there are going to have some sort of holiday
Speaker 1: tradition involving some manner of eggnog. We didn't really have
Speaker 1: time to get into all the variations, but I know
Speaker 1: there are some. I think I've had like a Puerto
Speaker 1: Rican variation of eggnog before. It was quite delightful. There's
Speaker 1: so many different regional variations, family variations. Please write in.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your take on all of this.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is a science podcast, with our core episodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short
Speaker 1: form artifact or monster fact. On Mondays we do a
Speaker 1: listener mail episode, and on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer, Max Williams. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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