Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday time for
Speaker 2: an episode from the Vault. This one originally aired December fifteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, and it's called a Goblet of Eggnog.
Speaker 2: It's all about that thick, thick drink.
Speaker 1: That's right. I was on the fence. I was like,
Speaker 1: is it too early to rerun the eggnog episode? And
Speaker 1: then I had to remind myself, well, I've already had
Speaker 1: my first cup of eggnog for this holiday season, so
Speaker 1: obviously it is not too early.
Speaker 2: You really want to listen to this episode before you
Speaker 2: do most of your eggnog drinking for the year, not after.
Speaker 1: Right, right. Yeah. It's stuff to discuss during the preparation
Speaker 1: or to take with you to the store when you
Speaker 1: purchase it. I think it's been on the shelves in
Speaker 1: the grocery store since like mid October or something.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised they haven't rebranded it as a Halloween drink
Speaker 1: as well, have orange eggnog. I mean, there you go,
Speaker 1: Green free ideas, here, free ideas.
Speaker 2: Vampire dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well, let's uh, let's pour it up
Speaker 1: and have a sip. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: It's that time of year again, 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.
Speaker 2: Is eggnog an invention? Sure, we can stretch the definition.
Speaker 2: 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 and it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that has a number of different
Speaker 1: customs and cultural details surrounding it. Now, Joe, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what your relationship with eggnog happens to be, because
Speaker 1: I don't know that we've ever really spoken about this.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've had eggnog together before, not that
Speaker 1: I recall, but my family's general approach is originally buy
Speaker 1: a carton of almond nag each year, largely for our
Speaker 1: son because he gets super into it. And if I
Speaker 1: have a chance to visit a like an upscale cocktail
Speaker 1: or a nice restaurant, then I will jump at the
Speaker 1: opportunity to order an eggnog if they have one on
Speaker 1: the menu. In the past, I've made it down to
Speaker 1: New Orleans for the start of Beach Bumberry Sipping Santa
Speaker 1: festivities at Beach bumb Berry's Latitude twenty nine. They also
Speaker 1: have pop ups all over the place, and they'll generally
Speaker 1: have at least one holiday tiki beverage on there that
Speaker 1: is at least eggnog esque in form.
Speaker 2: I'm picturing piles of crushed or pellet ice with kind
Speaker 2: of a frothy, creamy grime about them, and some nutmeg
Speaker 2: 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 Sost Bar, and I enjoyed a frozen
Speaker 1: take on a classic eggnog. So generally a rich drink though,
Speaker 1: so once twice three times per year max. That's generally
Speaker 1: enough for me. Before we came in here, though, I
Speaker 1: mentioned to my wife that I was about to record
Speaker 1: the eggnog episode, and she was kind enough to provide
Speaker 1: me with an entire glass of eggnog here for me
Speaker 1: to consume during this episode. The listeners at home, You'll
Speaker 1: have to take my word for it, Joe. I think
Speaker 1: you can see it on the video feed here.
Speaker 2: Wait, is this full boozeggnog or.
Speaker 1: Well you might well presume that, but I couldn't possibly comment. Yes, creamy, rich,
Speaker 1: hint of nutmeg, beautiful.
Speaker 2: I have no eggnog in the house. A cute cute
Speaker 2: Joe Peshei and Home Alone saying eggnog, eggnog dressed as
Speaker 2: a cop like, eggnog is the most disgusting substance on earth.
Speaker 2: And you know what, as a child, that was pretty
Speaker 2: much where my head was at. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: Joe Peshi in Home Alone is correct. I found the
Speaker 2: idea revolting. Not just revolting. I I think I probably
Speaker 2: found it borderline nauseating to think of a drink made
Speaker 2: out of eggs. Something changed over the years. Now I
Speaker 2: find it quite delightful.
Speaker 1: So it was the eggs that threw you off?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you're gonna drink eggs. I don't know. So
Speaker 2: I think about eggs. There's something that, you know. I
Speaker 2: liked eggs scrambled like they make them at the cracker barrel.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm thinking of like a thick, yellow curd
Speaker 2: like substance, and always in savory context. I mean, I know,
Speaker 2: obviously now that eggs are used in all kinds of
Speaker 2: baking and sweet contexts, but that's not how I thought
Speaker 2: about them when I was a kid. So the idea
Speaker 2: of drinking a sweet egg based beverage was absolutely vile
Speaker 2: to my brain.
Speaker 1: I can understand that. I mean, even the name is
Speaker 1: a bit potentially off putting. It's very forward with the egg.
Speaker 1: What you were about to drink contains eggs, and then
Speaker 1: the nog also can throw one for a curve. I
Speaker 1: do like some of the archaic spellings of eggnog that
Speaker 1: I've encountered researching this episode. Oftentimes the way we encounter
Speaker 1: it now it's egg n og, but some of these
Speaker 1: other spellings will be egg n ogg. I like the
Speaker 1: double the double g's occurring in both parts of the work.
Speaker 2: 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 point as a civilization where you
Speaker 1: can have something that is identifiable 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 2: Right. So you you mentioned almond nog. I guess that
Speaker 2: is equivalent in the same way that you might have
Speaker 2: 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 of the when 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: the classic nog, so I think it more than qualifies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nog is a thick, creamy, sweet drink.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a state of mind. It's a holiday tradition. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the sources I'm going to refer back to
Speaker 1: several times in this episode is the excellent book Imbibe
Speaker 1: exclamation Point by David Wandriche, which is a text that
Speaker 1: we've referenced in the show in the past. It is
Speaker 1: one of, if not the best books you can pick
Speaker 1: up on the history of the American cocktail. This is
Speaker 1: a great book. It's cites, among many others, the legendary
Speaker 1: professor Jerry Thomas who lived eighteen thirty through eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: the New Orleans bartender who wrote the seminal Bartender's Guide
Speaker 1: and helped popularize cocktail drinking in general. We're go into
Speaker 1: more depth on this in an older episode episodes that
Speaker 1: we did together on Mixology.
Speaker 2: I think we ended up talking about absinthe a lot
Speaker 2: 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. Wondridge includes a recipe from
Speaker 1: Jerry Thomas. Jerry Thomas would have you know, brought up
Speaker 1: together a bunch of these different recipes for drinks and
Speaker 1: put them in his own book at the time. This
Speaker 1: particular recipe from Jerry Thomas calls for sugar water, brandy
Speaker 1: rum and shaved ice. A little nutmeg goes on top,
Speaker 1: and wondridch includes a quote from This is an eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three quote from the Brooklyn Eagle that states that
Speaker 1: this punch was quote the surest thing in the world
Speaker 1: to get drunk on and so fearfully drunk that you
Speaker 1: won't know whether you are a cow yourself or some
Speaker 1: other foolish thing.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's that's good. No. One thing I have to
Speaker 2: point out is that when you listed the ingredients, you
Speaker 2: did not list milk. So I assume these are the
Speaker 2: things that are added to the milk.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, okay, yeah. The milk would would also be
Speaker 1: be an important part of this. It's so already we're
Speaker 1: kind of in the territory of what we think of
Speaker 1: when we think about eggnog. But of course there are
Speaker 1: no eggs there now when it comes to eggnog itself.
Speaker 1: Thomas was very much of the opinion that eggnog was
Speaker 1: quote a beverage of American origin, and Wondrich states that
Speaker 1: quote the drink's earliest mentions come from a seventeen eighty
Speaker 1: eight Philadelphia newspaper, and all the other mentions are American
Speaker 1: and if early European travelers to the United States viewed
Speaker 1: it as one of the novelties Americans were inflicting on
Speaker 1: the art of drinking. By the eighteen sixties, it was
Speaker 1: a drink of comfortable middle age with a wide, if
Speaker 1: strictly seasonal popularity. When Thomas added that in the North
Speaker 1: quote it is a favorite of all seasons, he was
Speaker 1: certainly overstating the case.
Speaker 2: So you bring up that mention in the seventeen eighty
Speaker 2: eight newspaper, and this name drop of eggnog as a
Speaker 2: recipe is also referenced in a great source I found
Speaker 2: that was aimed at unearthing the etymological history of eggnog,
Speaker 2: because it's obvious why the word egg is in the name.
Speaker 2: There are eggs in it, But what exactly is anog? Could,
Speaker 2: as the Simpsons proposed, you equally whip up a cauldron
Speaker 2: of corn nog.
Speaker 1: Corn dog sounds kind of delicious, like it brings to
Speaker 1: mind like corn puddings.
Speaker 2: I think it occurs in the Simpsons episode with the hurricane,
Speaker 2: when the stores are there's a run on the Quickie
Speaker 2: Mart and the only things left on the shelves are
Speaker 2: corn nog and wadded beef. But anyway, diving into the
Speaker 2: history and etymology of eggnog, corn nog, whatever, what have you?
Speaker 2: Any nogs? My source here is a December two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine article called the Origins of Eggnog Holiday Grog
Speaker 2: by the American Linguist and Language columnist Ben Zimmer, who
Speaker 2: is brother of the excellent science writer Karl Zimmer, who's
Speaker 2: been a guest on the show before Huh Crazy. So
Speaker 2: here's what Ben Zimmer says about nog. The word nog
Speaker 2: first shows up as a regional term in England, specifically
Speaker 2: in the region of East Anglia, so it's the eastern
Speaker 2: part of the country containing Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and
Speaker 2: it referred that term. They are referred to a type
Speaker 2: of beer. We know this because of a letter written
Speaker 2: from the County of Norfolk in the year sixteen ninety
Speaker 2: three by a man named Humphrey Priudeaux, who described quote
Speaker 2: a bottle of old strong beer, which in this country
Speaker 2: they call nog. So nog is high gravity beer, it's
Speaker 2: strong stuff. But to take one step back, why would
Speaker 2: the East Anglians call strong beer noog? Zimmer identifies a
Speaker 2: couple of hypotheses here. One is that it comes from
Speaker 2: the word noggin, which we today think of as antiquated
Speaker 2: slang for head for your head. But before that nogin
Speaker 2: meant a small mug or a small drink of spirits.
Speaker 2: So perhaps noggin was shorter was shortened to nog, and
Speaker 2: it came to refer to the beer inside the mug
Speaker 2: instead of the mug itself. And we do that kind
Speaker 2: of metonymy with words today like did you have wine? Oh,
Speaker 2: I drank two glasses. You're not saying you literally drank
Speaker 2: the glass. The glasses mean the wine inside the glass, right.
Speaker 2: But another idea is that the word noog for strong
Speaker 2: beer comes from a Scottish word nug or nugged ale,
Speaker 2: which means ale that you heat up by sticking a
Speaker 2: hot poker in it, which is funny enough to imagine
Speaker 2: in itself, but I can also see how that would
Speaker 2: correspond to a drink with strong alcohol alcohol content, because
Speaker 2: drinks with higher alcohol content are often said to taste
Speaker 2: 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 2: M Okay, so so far we've got the idea that
Speaker 2: you start with either a little mug called a noggin
Speaker 2: or a type of beer warmed with a hot poker
Speaker 2: called a nug And somehow one of these terms gets
Speaker 2: poured it over into this East Anglian word nog, which
Speaker 2: means strong beer. But how does that actually get connected
Speaker 2: to the sweet, milky, eggy drink we are familiar with.
Speaker 2: We don't know for sure, but the link in the
Speaker 2: chain seems to be alcohol, because while you can buy
Speaker 2: kid friendly nog in the dairy isle these days, everything
Speaker 2: I've been reading suggests that early eggnog was boozy. That
Speaker 2: was a primary characteristic of what the noog was. It
Speaker 2: 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 2: And Zimmer reports that a Maryland clergyman named Jonathan Bouche
Speaker 2: is alleged to have written the first known reference to
Speaker 2: eggnog and a poem in seventeen seventy five, but this
Speaker 2: poem was not published until about thirty years later, so
Speaker 2: we don't know when it was actually written for sure.
Speaker 2: But the relevant section of the poem goes like this,
Speaker 2: fog DRAMs in the morn or better still eggnog. This
Speaker 2: is nog with two g's at night hot suppings and
Speaker 2: at mid day grog my palette can regale. So you
Speaker 2: see the The context here is fully alcoholic grog refers
Speaker 2: to a spirit or alcoholic beverage. Then there's that line
Speaker 2: fog DRAMs in the morn or better still eggnog. A
Speaker 2: dram usually refers to a small drink of whiskey, and
Speaker 2: according to Miriam Webster, fog DRAMs are quote DRAMs resorted
Speaker 2: to on the pretense of their protecting from the danger
Speaker 2: of fog. I'm sorry, boss, I had to have another
Speaker 2: whiskey before work, or the fog could have killed me
Speaker 2: on the way here.
Speaker 1: All right, well, yeah, this is making sense. 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 2: So Bouchet may have written that in seventy seventy five.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say for sure, but according to Zimmer,
Speaker 2: the earliest rock solid references to eggnog where we know
Speaker 2: the date of their public appear in a handful of
Speaker 2: newspapers in the year seventeen eighty eight, as you mentioned earlier. Now,
Speaker 2: one is a March seventeen eighty eight report in the
Speaker 2: New Jersey Journal, which and I love that this is
Speaker 2: what some newspaper articles consisted of at the time. It says,
Speaker 2: a young man with a cormorant appetite meaning like gluttonous.
Speaker 2: A young man with a cormorant appetite voraciously devoured last
Speaker 2: week at Connecticut farms thirty raw eggs, a glass of eggnog,
Speaker 2: 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 for You're like,
Speaker 1: what's everybody overeating in New Jersey?
Speaker 2: Stop the presses. We've got to get this story, this
Speaker 2: hot story about the guy who ate thirty eggs in there. Okay,
Speaker 2: so whatever eggnog is at the time, he had some
Speaker 2: Another article is from October seventeen eighty eight in the
Speaker 2: Independent Gazetteer of Philadelphia, where a writer was complaining about
Speaker 2: an upset stomach and wrote, quote, when wine and beer,
Speaker 2: punch and eggnog meat instantly ensues.
Speaker 1: A quarrel, that there's wisdom to that, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've only ever heard the liquor before beer kind
Speaker 2: of thing. I've never heard it taken out to four
Speaker 2: 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 2: I think, yeah. So anyway, yeah, I love the fact
Speaker 2: that newspapers not only used to report on what some
Speaker 2: guy aided a form, but also what gave me an
Speaker 2: upset tummy. So it sounds like an alcoholic beverage known
Speaker 2: as eggnog was in common parlance in the colonies and
Speaker 2: the young United States in the late eighteenth century. But
Speaker 2: Zimmer also documents how an early example of eggnog was
Speaker 2: associated with Christmas celebration by citing a piece in the
Speaker 2: Virginia Chronicle from January seventeen ninety three, which reads as follows.
Speaker 2: On last Christmas Eve, several gentlemen met at Northampton Courthouse
Speaker 2: and spent the evening in mirth and festivity when eggnog
Speaker 2: was the principal liquor used by the company. After they
Speaker 2: had indulged pretty freely in this beverage, a gentleman in
Speaker 2: the company offered a bet that not one of the
Speaker 2: party could write four verses extempore, which should be rhyme
Speaker 2: and sense. Okay, he's like, we're so drunk, I bet
Speaker 2: none of you can write four lines of poetry that
Speaker 2: will make sense and rhyme. So what do they come
Speaker 2: up with? While one guy belts out the following, 'tis
Speaker 2: eggnog now, whose golden streams dispense far richer treasures to
Speaker 2: the ravished sense. The muse from wine derives a transient glare,
Speaker 2: but Eggnog's drafts afford her solid fare. So move over, wine.
Speaker 2: The muses are no longer interested in you now they
Speaker 2: will 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 Egnog.
Speaker 2: 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 he would have approved of Egnog,
Speaker 1: especially based on these historical references to agno.
Speaker 2: So do we know exactly what they were putting in
Speaker 2: eggnog at the time. Well, there's a book from seventeen
Speaker 2: ninety nine called Travels through the States of North America
Speaker 2: and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada during the
Speaker 2: years seventeen ninety five, ninety six and ninety seven by
Speaker 2: an Irish writer and explorer named Isaac Weld. And this
Speaker 2: passage actually reminds me of earlier when you were citing
Speaker 2: I think David Wondrich who said that sometimes people from
Speaker 2: Europe might encounter egnog and think, oh what what you know,
Speaker 2: what crimes they're committing against a drinking culture here in
Speaker 2: the Americas. And I wonder if there's a little bit
Speaker 2: of that kind of raised eyebrow going on in this passage.
Speaker 2: But we'll see what you think. So Weld is writing
Speaker 2: about a stop at an inn near Baltimore, Maryland, where
Speaker 2: he writes, quote, several travelers had stopped at the same
Speaker 2: house that I did the first night I was on
Speaker 2: the road, and we all breakfasted together preparatory to setting
Speaker 2: out the next morning. The American travelers, before they pursued
Speaker 2: their journey, took a hearty draft each. According to custom
Speaker 2: of eggnog, a mixture composed of new milk, eggs, rum,
Speaker 2: and sugar beat up together, so eggnog it should be heavy, sweet,
Speaker 2: exploding with alcohol. Drunk in large quantities in the morning
Speaker 2: before setting out on a long journey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is I mean it really it forces you
Speaker 1: to rethink eggnog because I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: are probably like like me, you grew up exposed to
Speaker 1: again the grocery store egnog, and there's this kind of
Speaker 1: sense that eggnog is this drink for everybody. Eggnog's this
Speaker 1: drink for kids. And as you get older, then you're
Speaker 1: perhaps in a situation where you can have the eggnog
Speaker 1: with something added to it, eggnog plus you know, if
Speaker 1: you like. But this that the historical truth of eggnog
Speaker 1: is no, this is the thing that the really drunken
Speaker 1: adults are having sometimes first thing in the morning.
Speaker 2: Also regarding famous eggnog recipes from the early days of
Speaker 2: the United States, there is a famous recipe for eggnog
Speaker 2: that is alleged to come from George Washington's kitchen papers.
Speaker 2: You'll find this if you google George Washington's Eggnog. I've
Speaker 2: seen some serious doubt cast upon its origins, like whether
Speaker 2: it was actually Washington's. But according to the Farmer's Almanac,
Speaker 2: this famous recipe goes as follows. It's one quart cream,
Speaker 2: one quart milk, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy,
Speaker 2: half a pint rye whiskey, half a pint Jamaica rum,
Speaker 2: and a quarter pint sherry. And then you mix the liquor,
Speaker 2: separate the yolks in the whites of twelve eggs, add
Speaker 2: sugar to the beaten yolks. Mix well. Then you add
Speaker 2: milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat the whites of the
Speaker 2: eggs until stiff peaks form, then fold slowly into the mixture.
Speaker 2: Then you let it sit in a cool place for
Speaker 2: several days. Then quote taste frequently. And I could be wrong,
Speaker 2: but I believe this is the recipe that our colleague,
Speaker 2: our colleague Alex Williams uses when he makes his famous
Speaker 2: eggnog 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 eggnog,
Speaker 1: I think we can at least consider the possibility of predecessors. That, Yes,
Speaker 1: even if egnog is something that emerges in North America,
Speaker 1: there are at least things not unlike agnog that one
Speaker 1: can encounter, say in at least late medieval and post
Speaker 1: medieval Europe.
Speaker 2: 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 hoodin Hoden Horse of Kent for the
Speaker 1: Monster Fact series, and I think that's a great example
Speaker 1: of this. It brings to mind various costume street wandering
Speaker 1: traditions as well as caroling and was sailing. Wassaile, of course,
Speaker 1: is a door to door ritualistic and communal hot drink
Speaker 1: that typically contained mold cider ale or wine and spices.
Speaker 1: But then there is the tradition of the posset, posset
Speaker 1: the passet. Yes, the Smithsonian Magazine website has a nice
Speaker 1: article about this, titled Past the Posset colon the Medieval
Speaker 1: Eggnog by Lisa Braman, And according to this article, it
Speaker 1: apparently dates back to late medieval Europe, and it looks
Speaker 1: like some of the examples come to us from the
Speaker 1: post medieval world and beyond. Anyway, the passet itself is
Speaker 1: a drinking vessel, as Brayman points out, and you see
Speaker 1: mention of it even in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which Lady
Speaker 1: Macbeth poisons the possets of the guards outside Duncan's quarters.
Speaker 2: 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 cords if
Speaker 1: you're reading or performing Shakespeare that you can't stop to wonder.
Speaker 1: Overall it's enough to be like, okay, it's this means
Speaker 1: drinking vessel. Okay, what's the next strange word that doesn't
Speaker 1: quite register for me? Let me translate that one in
Speaker 1: my head. But this is a If you can actually
Speaker 1: look up examples of this vessel online, the pauset this
Speaker 1: P O S S E T, and you'll find that
Speaker 1: some of the main examples of this it looks curiously
Speaker 1: like an ornate teapot with handles on both sides, a
Speaker 1: wide lidded aperture at the top, with a with a
Speaker 1: with a lid on top, and the stem for it,
Speaker 1: you know, like that like a te kettle. It feeds
Speaker 1: from the bottom of the vessel rather than from the
Speaker 1: middle or the top of the vessel. The reason for
Speaker 1: this design, according to brain And, is that you can
Speaker 1: drink directly from the stem to get at the liquid
Speaker 1: contents of the of the of the liquid it contains,
Speaker 1: but also you can take the lid off the top
Speaker 1: and go at the top of it with a spoon,
Speaker 1: because basically you're gonna have a mixture of things. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have a fluid beneath and kind of a chonky
Speaker 1: chonky creamy perhaps cheesy layer at the top.
Speaker 2: So this is like, it's like a curdled milk drink
Speaker 2: that has that has cheesy, floaty solid bits on the
Speaker 2: 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 poset.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it is the same principle as a straw,
Speaker 2: which I don't find unusual. But I have to say
Speaker 2: it is funny to imagine some like drinking out of
Speaker 2: 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 cheddar cheese on the top of your tea.
Speaker 1: It's something sweetier and creamier, but with that slight cheesy twist.
Speaker 2: To it, not like provolone.
Speaker 1: Right right now. I should also mention there are more
Speaker 1: contemporary posset dishes, such as you often see recipes for
Speaker 1: something called a lemon passet, 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 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 2: Yeah, it's a liquidy egg and milk or egg and
Speaker 2: cream type.
Speaker 1: Thing, right, And I think it's not crazy to imagine
Speaker 1: that this sort of precedent for this sort of drink
Speaker 1: and the sort of taste sensations that it brings about,
Speaker 1: this could feed into the very American traditions that would,
Speaker 1: according to Thomas, bring about the American eggnog.
Speaker 2: So I assume after we get out of this early
Speaker 2: period where mentions are scarce and don't really explain much
Speaker 2: about eggnog except like the Irish guy who's clearly not
Speaker 2: familiar with it, we get into a period where there
Speaker 2: is more extensive writing on eggnog, maybe like in actual
Speaker 2: cookery manuals.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot more material on You was
Speaker 1: a certain point, and Wondrich has a whole chapter on
Speaker 1: egg drinks in his book im Vibe. As he writes it,
Speaker 1: there 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 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, et cetera. Now, now I should
Speaker 1: point out this is the two thousand and 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 re explore older fashions and
Speaker 1: even remake them with modern twists, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: it's tremendously uncommon to find at least a single egg
Speaker 1: 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 2: I'm trying to think, what are the standard egg drinks other? Well,
Speaker 2: I guess there are like drinks I don't usually get,
Speaker 2: but like, aren't there like sours and fizzes and stuff
Speaker 2: that that have egg whites in them? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wondred points out that the major survivors include the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century Tom and Jerry drink. This would be not getting
Speaker 1: into the proportions, but it's like sugar, eggs rum, cinnamon, cloves,
Speaker 1: all spies. 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 Fizz, 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 flour, water,
Speaker 1: and club soda. It's one that famously requires a great
Speaker 1: deal of shaking. You may you may receive a dirty
Speaker 1: look from the bartender when you order it because of
Speaker 1: all the shaking it's going to require. Sometimes they have
Speaker 1: to pass it off to another bartender to continue shake
Speaker 1: shaking it. But it is also a delightful drink. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he Wonderedge points out though, that even though we only
Speaker 1: have so many egg drinks that kind of survived, there
Speaker 1: was this time where where egg based drinks, egg egg
Speaker 1: based alcoholic drinks were consumed on pretty much a daily basis,
Speaker 1: And we're 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. You get my point.
Speaker 2: That's that sounds like a magical time.
Speaker 1: A very rich, rich time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But as Paul Clark points out in the Imbibed magazine article,
Speaker 1: elements egg cocktails, changing tastes and salmonella scares pretty much
Speaker 1: chased raw eggs out of the bar. And this would
Speaker 1: be kind of this would be the reason that only
Speaker 1: so many egg drinks kind of survived this period of
Speaker 1: time in which, on one hand, yet changing taste you
Speaker 1: can imagine, perhaps you know their new fads and cocktails,
Speaker 1: new ingredients are more readily available for cocktails. And then
Speaker 1: there's this whole issue of salmonella.
Speaker 2: Salmonella concerns, of course, remain relevant to this day, and
Speaker 2: we'll come back to those in just a few minutes now.
Speaker 1: Wonder Che also points out there was a great deal
Speaker 1: of variation when it came to egg 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 it is if there's no secret, if the recipe
Speaker 1: is well known, you're going to end up having deviations anyway.
Speaker 1: For instance, anywhere you go today the my tie 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 the
Speaker 1: original recipe is very well known at this point, or
Speaker 1: it's it's very easily obtained if you have a desire
Speaker 1: to seek it out. But these regional differences in eggnog,
Speaker 1: this would this would really make people emotional. Wonderdch Show
Speaker 1: points out this account where there's a judge who encountered
Speaker 1: eggnog in an inn and it didn't have whiskey enough
Speaker 1: in it, and therefore there was this huge altercation.
Speaker 2: Ohll yeah, I mean again, going back to stories about ends.
Speaker 2: You don't say what time of day this is, but
Speaker 2: this eggnog might have been his morning eggnog, which sets
Speaker 2: the tone for the entire day. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: if you don't get your coffee right in the morning,
Speaker 2: that's bad news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if I don't get my heavily alcoholic eggnog in
Speaker 1: the morning. I'm no good now. Sometimes those regional differences, though,
Speaker 1: are going to be entirely based on what is available
Speaker 1: to you, and a great example of this is the
Speaker 1: Texian version of eggnog. He includes the recipe in the book.
Speaker 1: It stems from General Thomas Green of the Army of
Speaker 1: the Texas Republic from eighteen forty three. The recipe serves
Speaker 1: about one hundred and sixty It calls for seven gallons
Speaker 1: of mescal, seven gallons of donkey milk, thirty dozen eggs,
Speaker 1: and a large loaf of sugar.
Speaker 2: 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 is quite a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, seven gallons of mezcal, seven gallons of donkey milk.
Speaker 2: I've never tasted donkey milk. I don't even know what
Speaker 2: that would.
Speaker 1: Be like again two thousand and seven book, but Wondrich
Speaker 1: mentioned that donkey milk was becoming popular at the time
Speaker 1: in Europe due to this. I supposely it had some
Speaker 1: health advantages to it. I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's still popular as an alternative milk.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen it in myself in health
Speaker 1: fied stores. But then again, I'm not really in the
Speaker 1: market for donkey milk anyway. Well, Wondrich roughly translates the
Speaker 1: recipe for modern drinkers in that book. He of course
Speaker 1: says you can use cow milk instead of donkey milk,
Speaker 1: and he also recommends grating a little chocolate on top.
Speaker 1: So Jerry Thomas apparently chronicled six different eggnog recipes, and
Speaker 1: Wondrich includes recipes for three of them in his book.
Speaker 1: Roughly speaking, these are the contents of these three that
Speaker 1: he shares. 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, cognac, Santa Cruz, rum and milk. And
Speaker 1: then there's General Harrison's eggnog. This is ninth American President
Speaker 1: William Henry Harrison, and this was said to be one
Speaker 1: of his favorites. It called for egg, sugar, hard cider,
Speaker 1: and lumps of ice. Important to note here that cider
Speaker 1: drinking was part of his brand. His whole image that
Speaker 1: he tried to put out was like, I'm not really
Speaker 1: at home in this old Washington environment. I just want
Speaker 1: to sit on the porch and drink some hard cider.
Speaker 1: Won't you have some of my hard cider based eggnog
Speaker 1: and vote for me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was him saying like, I'm just a hard
Speaker 2: working frontiersman. I'm not one of these elites.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, 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 2: General Harrison also died about some like thirty days into
Speaker 2: his first presidential term. Yeah, he's the one who he
Speaker 2: didn't really make it very far. And their speculation about
Speaker 2: why he died, but one of them is that he
Speaker 2: may have succumbed to the fact that the water supply
Speaker 2: at the White House at the time was heavily contaminated
Speaker 2: 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 2: And probably plenty of raw sewage.
Speaker 1: Oh is it time for salmonella?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a great transition. So eggs and salmonilla.
Speaker 2: Salmonilla remains probably the main reason people have reservations about
Speaker 2: raw egg based food and drinks today. Salmonilla is a
Speaker 2: genus of bacteria named not after salmon the fish, but
Speaker 2: after an American veterinarian named Daniel Elmer Salmon. Though it
Speaker 2: was not discovered by him, it was named after him,
Speaker 2: basically because a species of salmonella was discovered by an
Speaker 2: assistant in a lab who worked for salmon. The assistant's
Speaker 2: name was Theobald Smith, but of course the boss gets
Speaker 2: all the glory. Some zero types of salmonella are responsible
Speaker 2: for really serious and historically significant diseases such as typhoid fever,
Speaker 2: but multiple types of salmonilla will result in infections of
Speaker 2: the intestinal tract. So salmonilla infection or salmonellosis, is one
Speaker 2: of the most common food borne illnesses, often characterized by fever, diarrhea,
Speaker 2: severe stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, and headache. And because salmonella
Speaker 2: is often transmitted through the fecal oral route, the risk
Speaker 2: of contracting it is higher when people don't have access
Speaker 2: to clean drinking water and effective sewage disposal. Though, salmonella
Speaker 2: can also be transmitted between animals and humans, so animal
Speaker 2: vectors such as eggs from infected chickens, can be a
Speaker 2: major source of salmonillosis in humans as well. Now, on
Speaker 2: the other hand, one thing to remember is that most
Speaker 2: eggs are fine. Most eggs are not infected with salmonilla.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the exact proportion is, but One
Speaker 2: figure I saw kicking around from the two thousands was
Speaker 2: a CDC estimate that roughly one in every twenty thousand
Speaker 2: chicken eggs in the United States was contaminated. That number
Speaker 2: may be different today. If so, it is probably somewhat
Speaker 2: lower than that. But you know, I'm not saying you
Speaker 2: should go about eating raw eggs. There is definitely risk there,
Speaker 2: but also like the odds are pretty low that any
Speaker 2: given egg is going to make you sick. Also, eggs
Speaker 2: are fine if you cook them to the proper temperature
Speaker 2: for the proper time. One hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 2: will kill just about anything instantly. Also, you know, even
Speaker 2: lower temperatures, if held for a sufficient amount of time,
Speaker 2: will be enough to to basically sterilize eggs. This is
Speaker 2: you can look up charts on the amount of time
Speaker 2: eggs need to spend at a certain temperature in order
Speaker 2: to make them safe. However, eggnog is traditionally not made
Speaker 2: with eggs that are cooked at all, but rather with
Speaker 2: raw ones. So is there any risk, Well, yes, obviously
Speaker 2: if you are just drinking raw eggs straight up, there
Speaker 2: is some risk of salmonilla infection. One example of this
Speaker 2: I mean, it happens all the time, but one example,
Speaker 2: one case study I dug up with an interesting secondary finding.
Speaker 2: This is a study published in The Lancet in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five by Steer at All called person to person
Speaker 2: spread of salmonilla typhimurium after a hospital common source outbreak.
Speaker 2: So the abstract reads, in September nineteen seventy three, diarrhea
Speaker 2: caused by salmonilla typhimurium developed in thirty two people in
Speaker 2: a main hospital. Both epidemiological and microbiological evidence indicated that
Speaker 2: raw egg beaten in milk for eggnog was responsible for
Speaker 2: the infection. However, six patients and eight employees had not
Speaker 2: had eggnog, and their illness developed after the source of
Speaker 2: infection had been recognized and removed. Most of these people
Speaker 2: had had direct contact with an infected patient and presumably
Speaker 2: acquired the infection by person to person spread. It's concluded
Speaker 2: that person to person spread of salmonilla typhimurium can occur
Speaker 2: in hospitals and can be a hazard to patients and staff.
Speaker 2: So initially a bunch of people in a hospital got
Speaker 2: salmonella from drinking eggnog, but then those people gave secondary
Speaker 2: infections to others who didn't even touch the noog. Also,
Speaker 2: I wanted to share another medical journal article I found
Speaker 2: just because I thought it was very weird. This is
Speaker 2: called eyelid absess in an eggnog drinker by Marcus and Wolverson,
Speaker 2: published in the British Medical Journal nineteen eighty nine. Short
Speaker 2: story is a seventy two year old man showed up
Speaker 2: at a hospital in England with a huge abscess swelling
Speaker 2: on his left upper eyelid, which they eventually determined had
Speaker 2: spread to an infection of the bone in his forehead,
Speaker 2: the bone above where his eye was. So he was
Speaker 2: put under general anesthesia and the absess was drained. They
Speaker 2: did a culture of the pus and it revealed the
Speaker 2: presence of a type of salmonella. They eventually did another
Speaker 2: procedure to take care of the swelling in the bones
Speaker 2: of the face, and he eventually made a full recovery.
Speaker 2: The man had no gastro intestinal symptoms, and the authors
Speaker 2: say that there had been recent cases of salmonilla infection
Speaker 2: related to eggs, So they asked him about his diet.
Speaker 2: And here I'm going to read from the case report
Speaker 2: his diet consisted of West Indian and European food, but
Speaker 2: he said that he cooked all eggs well. When he
Speaker 2: was seen in the outpatient department, he was specifically asked
Speaker 2: if he drank eggnog, and he then admitted drinking it frequently,
Speaker 2: using a recipe of raw eggs, brandy, sugar, milk, and
Speaker 2: vanilla essence. Now, the authors say they could find no
Speaker 2: previous evidence of this particular type of salmonella causing an
Speaker 2: eyelid absess, but that there are other known cases of
Speaker 2: this bacterial infection spreading from a gut infection originally to
Speaker 2: a secondary infection elsewhere in the body, such as in
Speaker 2: the bones, especially the long bones, especially in patients with
Speaker 2: underlying medical conditions, and in patients over seventy years of age.
Speaker 2: And finally, the author's write quote, from nineteen eighty one
Speaker 2: to nineteen eighty six, the proportion of salmonilla infections caused
Speaker 2: by salmonella, and then they're talking about a specific type here,
Speaker 2: salmonilla teriditis rose from eleven percent to twenty eight percent.
Speaker 2: This rise was due mainly to a rise in phage
Speaker 2: type four infections. Transmission of this phage type has been
Speaker 2: increasingly associated with poultry, and it is now known to
Speaker 2: be transmitted in eggs. Egg born salmonilla teroiditis is destroyed
Speaker 2: by thorough cooking. The raw egg in the eggnog may
Speaker 2: have been the vehicle of infection. Unless specifically asked for,
Speaker 2: a history of eggnog drinking may not emerge on dietary questioning.
Speaker 2: But okay, now, I'm sure a lot of people out
Speaker 2: there are wondering, Wait a minute. Okay, obviously, you know
Speaker 2: you mix up a bunch of raw eggs and you
Speaker 2: just drink that, that definitely is putting you at risk.
Speaker 2: But if you put alcohol in the eggnog, surely that
Speaker 2: 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 2: Now, frustratingly, I have not been able to put together
Speaker 2: a very clear answer on the exact relationship between alcohol
Speaker 2: content and raw egg safety. Instead, I've sort of assembled
Speaker 2: some different conflicting data points. But I'll share a few
Speaker 2: of the results I came across. So one thing I
Speaker 2: found is a study in the International Journal of Food
Speaker 2: Microbiology published in nineteen ninety called Survival of pathogenic microorganisms
Speaker 2: in an eggnog like product containing seven percent ethanol. This
Speaker 2: is by notermans at all, So this is a lab test.
Speaker 2: They say, let's make some boozy eggnog and directly inject
Speaker 2: pathogenic microorganisms in there and see what happens. So they
Speaker 2: say a liquor consisting of whole egg sacros meaning sugar
Speaker 2: twenty five percent and ethanol of seven percent was artificially
Speaker 2: contaminated with Salmonella teriditis, salmonilla, typhomurium, Staphylococcus aureus, three different
Speaker 2: strains Basillis serious, and Listeria. And they say, after three
Speaker 2: weeks of incubation at twenty two degrees celsius twenty two
Speaker 2: degrees celsius is about seventy one degrees fahrenheit room temperature,
Speaker 2: the numbers of salmonilla, Staphylococcus aureus, and of the Listeria
Speaker 2: species they use decreased by more than three log based
Speaker 2: ten units, and if I understand correctly, I believe that's
Speaker 2: a ninety nine point nine percent reduction in the number
Speaker 2: of bacteria units there. They say, under such conditions, however,
Speaker 2: the total number of microorganisms increased three log ten units.
Speaker 2: Then they say at four degrees celsius, so I think
Speaker 2: this would be simulating refrigerator temperatures. The decrease of pathogenic
Speaker 2: microorganisms was much slower, and a decrease of three log
Speaker 2: based ten units was observed only after seven weeks of incubation.
Speaker 2: So this study finds eggnog without alcohol incubated at room temperature. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's you allow populations of salmonilla and staff to explode.
Speaker 2: But in this study, the presence of seven percent straight
Speaker 2: ethanol significantly reduced the amount of salmonilla staff in listeria
Speaker 2: over the course of three weeks at room temperature and
Speaker 2: over the course of seven weeks at fridge temperature. However,
Speaker 2: other microorganisms can grow.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure this recipe for agnog that they used
Speaker 1: is the doctor cushion catheter right, recipe for agnog With
Speaker 1: all of these added diseases.
Speaker 2: You can just imagine Christopher Lee drooling over it. Well,
Speaker 2: the Stanton Twins dance. But the amount of alcohol clearly matters.
Speaker 2: One highly cited informal experiment. This was not published in
Speaker 2: a scientific journal as far as I can tell, but
Speaker 2: it was done and reported on by NPR for Science Friday.
Speaker 2: It was done in the late two thousands by microbiologists
Speaker 2: at the at Rockefeller University named Vince Faschetti and Ray
Speaker 2: and Shuck and it was covered on Science Friday. And
Speaker 2: apparently these researchers used a recipe that the staff at
Speaker 2: the university would make every year, which originally traced back
Speaker 2: to the great American microbiologist Rebecca Lancefield. So this is
Speaker 2: her original eggnog recipe. She had worked at Rockfiller University
Speaker 2: decades earlier. Apparent they're still making her eggnog years after
Speaker 2: she passed away. And the recipe includes raw eggs, but
Speaker 2: also cream, sugar, and a lot of hard liquor. The
Speaker 2: liquors in this version are Bourbon and rum NPR reported
Speaker 2: that the alcohol concentration of the final drink was about
Speaker 2: twenty percent. And the way they would do it is
Speaker 2: every year they'd make it before Thanksgiving and then enjoy
Speaker 2: it around Christmas time. So it had an incubation period
Speaker 2: in the refrigerator of about six weeks. So for this experiment,
Speaker 2: the researchers made their usual noog, but they deliberately spiked
Speaker 2: it once again with salmonilla. Just you can watch video
Speaker 2: of this. They're just injecting this orange juice into the eggs.
Speaker 2: It's disgusting. They say. They put in the amount of
Speaker 2: salmonella you would expect from including about somewhere between one
Speaker 2: and ten contaminated eggs, and then they took samples at
Speaker 2: various stages of preparation and incubation to see what grew
Speaker 2: over the course of the next three weeks. So egg
Speaker 2: plus salmonilla with no alcohol, that's just it formed a
Speaker 2: solid mat of salmon just huge boom, millions of bacteria. Disgusting.
Speaker 1: Hey, you can need your spoon in your poset for
Speaker 1: that one ugh.
Speaker 2: Egg plus salmonilla plus alcohol with the sample taken immediately
Speaker 2: after mixing give you a modest reduction, but still plenty
Speaker 2: of salmonilla growth. This would still absolutely make you sick.
Speaker 2: Egg plus salmonilla plus alcohol, but one day after mixing,
Speaker 2: still plenty of salmonilla, but less than the one taken
Speaker 2: right after mixing. One week later there was noticeably less
Speaker 2: bacterial growth, but they said still probably enough to make
Speaker 2: you sick. But then the sample from three weeks later
Speaker 2: there's nothing, no bacterial growth at all. So somewhere between
Speaker 2: one week and three weeks this batch went from biohazard
Speaker 2: to presumably safe. Though I noticed that the Science Friday
Speaker 2: report made a joke about like the researchers themselves are
Speaker 2: joking about this. They said, you know, we could really
Speaker 2: commit to our result and just drink it, but maybe not,
Speaker 2: which makes sense right, like why risk it? And that
Speaker 2: kind of spirit comes through in a lot of the
Speaker 2: other sources I've seen talking about whether alcohol will render
Speaker 2: your eggnog safe, because it seems clear there's evidence that
Speaker 2: at least in some cases, even if you got unlucky
Speaker 2: enough in got a contaminated egg, given enough alcohol and
Speaker 2: an enough time, the noog would probably be safe. But
Speaker 2: there are a lot of variables here, and so it
Speaker 2: seems like a bunch of public health and food safety
Speaker 2: sources are still cautious. They're still kind of cagy about
Speaker 2: giving the green light on this, and they default to
Speaker 2: saying that if you want to be sure you're safe,
Speaker 2: you should use pasteurized eggs from a carton which have
Speaker 2: been rendered safe by preheating in the facility where they
Speaker 2: were packaged, or they also recommend cooking the eggs. Basically,
Speaker 2: like sources citing experts at the FDA or the USDA
Speaker 2: say that you can't always count on alcohol to kill
Speaker 2: potential bacterial content of raw eggs, and if you want
Speaker 2: to be safe, the eggs should be cooked. You can
Speaker 2: do this by like mixing the eggs and milk together
Speaker 2: and gently bringing up to one hundred and sixty degrees
Speaker 2: fahrenheit while stirring to kill any possible bacterial content before
Speaker 2: you add the other ingredients. So personally, I don't know
Speaker 2: exactly where we are left here. I will say it
Speaker 2: looks like some experiments do show that alcohol content will
Speaker 2: at least often, maybe not always, but will at least
Speaker 2: often neutralize the main bacteria that people are worried about,
Speaker 2: meaning salmonilla, given enough alcohol and enough time. And I
Speaker 2: will say that I also, just speaking for myself, not
Speaker 2: giving advice to other people, have personally drunk eggnog made
Speaker 2: in this way with raw eggs but with lots of
Speaker 2: alcohol content, and personally I felt fine about it. But
Speaker 2: it also looks like some experts still have concerns that
Speaker 2: this might not always work, and caution that if you
Speaker 2: want to make sure you're safe, you should cook your
Speaker 2: eggs or use a pasteurized product.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is also enough to make one rethink
Speaker 1: eating raw cookie dough and so forth.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, well, it's true, I guess of
Speaker 2: anything with raw eggs in it, like, there is always
Speaker 2: some small amount of risk, you know, some small proportion
Speaker 2: of eggs out there are going to be infected. Most
Speaker 2: eggs are fine, but some are going to have some
Speaker 2: in them, So you're always running that risk. And I guess,
Speaker 2: I guess some of the difficulty comes from not just
Speaker 2: whether or not you will accept the risk, but from
Speaker 2: not knowing exactly how risky it is. Like you you
Speaker 2: can't come up, you don't have a number, you know,
Speaker 2: to say like, Okay, I have this percent chance of
Speaker 2: getting salmonila if I do this instead, you just have
Speaker 2: a vague sense that I have some small chance and
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly what that chance is.
Speaker 1: But any way, that's It's the holiday season. It's about
Speaker 1: it's about thinking about your your chances of survival, a
Speaker 1: winter festivity that it is supposed to get you through
Speaker 1: the darkest portion of the year and hopefully see about
Speaker 1: the resurrection of the living world.
Speaker 2: That's quite beautifully put. But on the other hand, I'll
Speaker 2: just say, like, you know, if if you're not sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: just cook your eggs or just use the past your
Speaker 2: eyes thing I mean it's fine now.
Speaker 1: Last year, unstuff to blow your mind. We did an
Speaker 1: entire episode looking at the major reward leg lamp from
Speaker 1: a Christmas Story, the nineteen eighties holiday classic film, and
Speaker 1: you know, looking at this leg shaped lamp and finding
Speaker 1: predecessors to this in the ancient world. In a similar way,
Speaker 1: I would like to at the close of this episode
Speaker 1: on eggnog, consider the nineteen eighty nine holiday film Christmas Vacation,
Speaker 1: which of course starred a great cast Chevy Chase, Beverly Dangelo,
Speaker 1: Randy Quaid, among others. But there are at least a
Speaker 1: couple of key scenes in this movie in which the
Speaker 1: Griswold family drinks eggnog from glass goblets made in the
Speaker 1: likeness of the Wally World moose. These are you can
Speaker 1: actually buy these now, this is an actual product. But
Speaker 1: in the movie they are these these little glass goblets
Speaker 1: and they have big glass moose antlers on either side,
Speaker 1: and there's a big droopy moose snout on the front.
Speaker 1: Hold it by the ear and you sip your eggnog
Speaker 1: that way, or you gulp it, as it happens to
Speaker 1: be the case in some of the scenes.
Speaker 2: I imagine the moose face has to be facing out
Speaker 2: or else the snout would sort of prevent you from
Speaker 2: from getting it to your lips. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd have to hold the glass in just the
Speaker 1: right way. It's a ceremonial vessel. And I started looking
Speaker 1: around as thinking, I don't know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's going to be something in the ancient world that
Speaker 1: matches up with this. But luckily, once more eighties holiday
Speaker 1: movie prop design is in line with the manufacture of
Speaker 1: artifacts in the ancient world. I would like to discuss
Speaker 1: the ryton. This is generally spelled r hytn and it
Speaker 1: is a style of head cup that appears in various
Speaker 1: forms throughout the ancient world, according to Maha Abd el
Speaker 1: Maghwud al Kadi in Forms and functions of rytons in
Speaker 1: Ptotomaic Egypt. According to this author, they were likely Persian
Speaker 1: in origin and were particularly pop they're during the Acaimenid
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 a you know, the hollowed horn of
Speaker 1: a beast, But the design and function here is a
Speaker 1: little more involved. So imagine a drinking horn in which
Speaker 1: the slender part of the horn, the tapering part of
Speaker 1: the horn, is in the likeness of an animal's head,
Speaker 1: or in the like the front half of an animal.
Speaker 1: And we don't have time in this episode to really
Speaker 1: dig into the variation and the different cultural takes in
Speaker 1: this episode. But again, this would have been a realistic
Speaker 1: drinking vessel. This would not be something you would bust out,
Speaker 1: I would imagine for your just everyday consumption. This would
Speaker 1: be for ceremonial drinking. And there are essentially two types
Speaker 1: of ryton. In one form, you drink from the slender
Speaker 1: part of the ryton it above one's head or roughly
Speaker 1: you know, above one's head, or at least parallel with
Speaker 1: one's head, by either twin handles on the side, or
Speaker 1: from some other kind of handle that's a fixed to
Speaker 1: the object, or even from sort of the horn itself.
Speaker 1: In other forms, one drinks from the wide portion of
Speaker 1: the ryton, 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 there are antlers on it
Speaker 1: and you might not be able to set it down,
Speaker 1: it might not have a bottom to it.
Speaker 2: 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 going to do any paperwork. This is probably
Speaker 1: part of some ritual. I don't know. You can easily
Speaker 1: imagine some sort of warrior's feast, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Right, you can't drink it while you're podcasting. It's maybe
Speaker 2: to drink 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 Stagshead Ryton, dating to four
Speaker 1: hundred BCE. This is a silver artifact that actually made
Speaker 1: headlines just last year due to its three point five
Speaker 1: million dollar appraisal value and its presence among stolen antiquities
Speaker 1: 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 eluded from a museum
Speaker 1: in Turkey originally, but I'm unsure exactly when the looting
Speaker 1: occurred other than sometime during the twentieth century during a
Speaker 1: time of unrest, which that only narrows it down so
Speaker 1: much concerning the twentieth century, though, it does seem to
Speaker 1: be of ancient Greek manufacture, somewhere in the region of
Speaker 1: the Black Sea, probably from the fifth century BCE. And
Speaker 1: with this one, you'd apparently drink from the stag's lower
Speaker 1: lip while holding it aloft, though not by the antlers,
Speaker 1: as is visible in many photos of this particular artifact.
Speaker 1: There's this curved handle behind the neck. Oh, I see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the question remains, is the Wally World mug a ryton? No,
Speaker 1: it's not. No, it's not. Yes, it's first of all,
Speaker 1: it's not horn shaped. It also doesn't You don't drink
Speaker 1: from the moose's lips, so that alone wouldn't disqualify it
Speaker 1: from being a ryton, as we previously noted, though I've
Speaker 1: included a picture for you, Joe, of a ryton that
Speaker 1: would involve you drinking from the wide portion as opposed
Speaker 1: to the beast lips. You can sort of see, so
Speaker 1: this one would be very much a situation where you
Speaker 1: have this kind of like I don't know, bronze or
Speaker 1: golden chalice, and you wouldn't be able to set it
Speaker 1: down because instead of having a flat surface, flat bottom
Speaker 1: on the bottom of your goblet, there is like the
Speaker 1: head of a ram down there. Yeah, so you'd have
Speaker 1: to lay it on its side, I guess, in which
Speaker 1: case you would either spill what you were drinking or
Speaker 1: you would have to have consumed it all.
Speaker 2: Once again, the medium is the message here. This is
Speaker 2: technology that shows that by necessity, shows you a way
Speaker 2: 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 aligned with some sort
Speaker 1: of warrior ethos. We do see Clark Griswold drinking copious
Speaker 1: 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 2: Maybe it's to show in a subtle way that Clark
Speaker 2: is actually coldly calculating in the scene, and he's not
Speaker 2: 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 motivations and his desires in Christmas Vacation.
Speaker 2: Clark is neutral evil cousin cousin Randy Quaid, I'd say
Speaker 2: chaotic neutral.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. All right, So again, not really
Speaker 1: a Ryton in Christmas Vacation. But I think we might
Speaker 1: well imagine a scene from an alternate dimension in which
Speaker 1: there's a scene in Christmas Vacation in which Clark Griswold
Speaker 1: holds aloft the mighty Wally the moose right on this
Speaker 1: big glass moose head, or perhaps it's silver in this scenario,
Speaker 1: a big silver moose head. Perhaps you grip it by
Speaker 1: the antlers, and he's allowing cousin Eddie to then drink
Speaker 1: nourishing noog from the lips of the moose before he
Speaker 1: sends him out into glorious battle against the enemies of Christmas.
Speaker 2: Bravo.
Speaker 1: All right, that's all I have.
Speaker 2: God bless us everyone.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will say also, I fortunately finished my eggnog
Speaker 1: before we got to the draining of abscesses, So hopefully
Speaker 1: that calibrates the 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 2: Why are you saying that, Rob? Are you saying that?
Speaker 2: Otherwise it would suggest the mental image that your glass
Speaker 2: of creamy mixture is what's out coming out of.
Speaker 1: The Yes, that it is a goblet of holiday pus,
Speaker 1: which you might be drinking from the glass ahead of
Speaker 1: a moose, which doesn't help, or from the lips of
Speaker 1: a moose right on.
Speaker 2: 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 that 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 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer Max Williams. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 2: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 2: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 2: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.
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