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