December 24 is a celebration in America of copying a recipe from Britain, making an inexpensive version of it, then proclaiming it as our own.

As with most things considered distinctly American, eggnog is a tweaked and tinkered version of an import. The story, as I heard it many years ago, is that a fashionable drink that grew during the Tudor dynasty (1485-1603) called syllabub was imported and renamed in America, as it died off in England.

The drink started with the fact that only the well-to-do of England before the 1700s could own cows and afford to drink milk fresh hot from the source let alone laced with exotic spices and expensive alcohol.

THE principal sale of milk from the cow is in St. James’s Park. The once fashionable drink known as syllabubs — the milk being drawn warm from the cow’s udder, upon a portion of wine, sugar, spice, — is now unknown.

The once fashionable celebratory drink is now unknown, says this person in 18th Century London. It was relegated to the recipe books such as the 1786 “Complete English Cook“, buried among the many other options.

What about Posset?

Some have written that Posset, not Syllabub, is the correct lineage for today’s celebratory drink. I find this to be a leap, given that London cookbooks of 1762 categorized Posset in this context:

I. Of Soups, Broths and Gravy.
II. Of Pancakes, Fritters, Possets, Tanseys

Pancakes, Fritters and Tanseys all are fried, which leaves Possets to be cooked into a curdled cream or even a custard.

Some have pointed to an even starker context: Shakespeare’s Macbeth reference to the posset as a healthy nightcap, a drink conveniently easy to poison before bed.

The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms
Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugg’d their possets
That death and nature do contend about them,
Whether they live or die.

The poison context seems a bit off. Spiced anything is easy to poison. Anyway the greater context is the “health” aspects of a posset, which were rooted in medieval times. Eating a cooked (sanitized) protein and alcohol slurry may have given the appearance of curing the sick because better than not eating at all. (From Eearly English Book Online “Food and Physick”, for which 18th Connect gives a sneak preview)

Another special Preservative: Take an Egge, make a hole in the top of it, take out the white, and the yolk, and fill the shell only with Saffron; roast the shell and Saffron together, in Embers of Charcole, untill the shell wax yellow; then beat shell and all together in a Morter, with half a spoonful of Mustard-Seed: Now so soon as any suspition is had of Infection, dissolve the weight of a French Crown, in ten spoonfulls of Posset-Ale, drink it luke-warm, and sweat upon it in your naked Bed

Enjoy your medicine. Yuck. In other words, the medicinal muck of a posset served in a person’s darkest hour, as they lay waiting for death, is unlikely to be a direct root for today’s party serving eggnog. There is a transition/fork at the very least from posset to syllabub, or perhaps a disconnect, when milk with spice and booze became fashionable for partying. A modern descendant of posset is more likely to be kumyss.

I mean syllabub, hot milk pulled from the udder and mixed with flavorings, is typically for celebration not solitary nightcaps or plagued deathbeds. Thus syllabub makes far more sense when you think about what you’re doing with eggnog today.

The demise and intellectual property transfer of syllabub

Serving syllabub at parties lost favor in England around the time its colony (e.g. America) was importing anything it could for celebratory significance. Dairy economics of the colonies were a key factor in transfer of high-brow beverage to common table. Privileged recipes of status in England easily were transformed into replicas with new resource abundances (also found with Cheddar cheese).

There was a small catch to the American colony use of syllabub. Import costs for fine wines and liquors forced change in the ingredients. Alcohol found easily on ships sailing in America — rum of the Caribbean — was an obvious substitute to start with. A more likely substitution later was based on variations of whiskey such as the corn-based bourbon (rum trade and imports were scuttled during the Revolution).

Americans became so accustomed to the English idea of a milk and spiced alcohol drink for celebrations, despite the decline in England, that an attempt at the US Army academy to regulate consumption in 1826 led to dangerous riots.

A few of the cadets took Thayer’s regulations [of eggnog] as a challenge and intended to outsmart the superintendent and his staff by having the best holiday celebration West Point had seen. The term “celebration” may not apply in this case, but the incident of the “Eggnog Riot” was something West Point had never experienced. At least seventy cadets took part in the shenanigans, resulting in assaults on two officers and destruction of North Barracks, as some of the students, in their inebriated state, had smashed several windows.

This level of anti-authority violence might need perspective. Consider how in the 1800s Americans carried forward another aristocratic tradition from England. The British Kingdom passed its Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. It took another 30 years and a bloody protracted Civil War started by the Southern states before America could abolish slavery. In 1913 a book called “Dishes and Beverages of The Old South” even recommended making syllabub as an “Old South” tradition for special occasions!

Harking back to the supper table – syllabub, as nearly as I recall, was made of thick cream lightly reinforced with stiffly beaten white of egg – one egg-white to each pint – sweetened, well flavored with sherry or Madeira wine, then whipped very stiff, and piled in a big bowl, also in goblets to set about the bowl…

Thus, today in America what we really celebrate is the commodity effect, aristocratic-like access made inexpensive, to fresh milk and alcohol. Eggnog is not the only product like this, borrowed and interpreted from the wealthy abroad without attribution. There are many others such as cheddar cheese mentioned above (officially only from the caves of Cheddar and at some point declared by a King the finest cheese in England).

Here’s a fun chart of eggnog showing up in menus over time in America, from the New York Public Library, where you can see price:

Isn’t big data amazing?

A new recipe

Given this history, here’s my simple recipe to celebrate America’s National Eggnog Day:

• Six Tbsp of Grassmilk
• Six grass-fed eggs
• Six cups of Wild Turkey 101 Rye
• 1 tsp fresh grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1Tbsp Grass-fed butter (Note: Irish butter is often cited as grass-fed. It really is only about 300 days a year of grass feed. German butter can be grass fed year round. An excellent alternative butter is from Yak)

Mix the milk, eggs and spices. Heat a saucepan with the butter. Pour the whiskey and hand remaining five cups to your guests. Take a sip of the whiskey. Pour the dairy mixture into the pan and wait until it’s cooked. Take another sip of the whiskey. Scramble the mixture in the pan, adding other ingredients as desired. Sip the whiskey. Serve scrambled eggs to your guests as you all enjoy your unspoilt American whiskey.

Now that’s American.

An old recipe

On the other hand, if you still think you want to drink the stuff of origin ala the Tudors (or at least the Victorian version of it, before it disappeared), the BBC offers this recipe from Mrs. Beeton’s 1861 “Book of Household Management”

• 570ml/1 pint sherry or white wine
• 1/2 grated nutmeg
• sugar to taste
• 900ml/1 1/2 pt milk

1. Put the wine into a bowl, with the grated nutmeg and plenty of pounded sugar, and add it to the milk.
2. Clouted cream may be held on the top, with pounded cinnamon or nutmeg and sugar; and a little brandy may be added to the wine before the milk is put in.
3. In some countries, cider is substituted for the wine: when this is used, brandy must always be added. Warm milk may be poured on from a spouted jug or teapot; but it must be held very high.

…and just remember when she says jug or teapot that’s a reference to an aristocrat’s cow udder tended by his milk girl.

Don’t get me started on the security issues in trusting an aristocrat’s milk girl. Seriously, auditing milk girls for fraud was important business in old England. Milk often was diluted with water, for example, if the customer wasn’t watching carefully.

Instead of that hassle, just head out to a local dairy in America and ask if they will let you pull an udder for hot milk into a large bowl to celebrate Eggnog Day.

Bring this recipe and show it to the dairy:

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Updated to add: Compare and contrast the original Syllabub with President Eisenhower’s Whitehouse cook book, which you can find in his archive today. Here’s a recipe for eggnog that prefers bourbon, “coffee cream” and doesn’t even mention spice until a garnish at the end.

Once upon a time as a student I wandered the empty, dark and wet streets of London in search of coffee. No place seemed to serve the stuff I had become accustomed to in America. How was I expected to work through the night without a pot of hot black coffee? A lonley Dunkin Donuts near the corner of Kingsway and High Holborn became my solace.

I was living in a city of half-empty jars of instant coffee powder and nothing better. Pub and restaurant staff would give me a look of confusion after I would order coffee but then protest “That’s not what I meant. That’s not coffee.” Their response? “So do you want tea then?” No. I didn’t want tea. Thank you Dunkin Donuts for keeping a pot of hot black coffee on for me. Sorry I never ate the donuts.

Perhaps the problem was one of marketing. Nescafe was an influential voice for so long (since 1938 — per the ad above) that by 1993 the UK still was under the impression that Americans stirred a spoonful of flavored sawdust into a cup of hot water…and why would anyone want to drink that rubbish when they could take tea, scotch or beer? I told native Londoners about my quest for coffee but they just snickered and said “I s’pose you also want peanut-butter, a shower and a burrito? Haha!”

A few years after I navigated the troubled waters of coffee in London I headed north to explore throughout the highlands of Scotland; sampling scotch to study the ingredients, methods of distillation and general history.

This awoke my fascination with whiskey and small-batch bourbons back in America. I found it curious how Jim Beam had created in the late 1980s four low-cost brands of single-barrel bourbon that were far less expensive than the mainstream brands but of better quality. Things were going smoothly until I witnessed a big change. Prices sky-rocketed in America as quality diminished or was made constant. The price for Knob Creek doubled from $16 to $32 in just two or three years. The need to understand process and ingredients (e.g. the search for a particular bean and roaster, the hunt for a single-barrel or for a particular bottler) lost meaning and value.

It became a question of just which giant conglomerate was running brands and for what margin (Bush Pilot was forced out of production by American lawyers, Lagavulin reduced production and sold to Diageo*, and Laphroig was acquired. As far as I can tell there is now only one independent distillery in Scotland. Oh, and Starbucks were popping up all over London). The challenge to learning about roasters or distilleries and their details…gone. Consistent mediocrity replaced the risk of dealing with inferior and superior quality. It was like the scene in Kubrick’s 2001 when all food and drink is reduced to baby-formula, even for adults.

Meanwhile, during the fall and decline of interest in other beverages, I was repeatedly exposed to tea. I mean I always had been interested in the odd tea, especially some of the stranger herbal collections from Minnesota and Colorado like Morning Thunder Barley and Good Earth, but I soon realized it was undervalued, open to innovation and incredibly complex. By 2007 I found myself exploring it like never before and paying more attention to the risks and rewards of discovery.

Along came Pu-erh

After many many days wandering through tea shops it seemed to me that I was using the same taste filters for tea that I had for coffee and whiskey; I was finding full-bodied smokey or woody flavors with a touch of bitter and a sweet aftertaste.

One day I stumbled upon the fact that a post-fermented tea from the Yunnan province in China, called Pu-erh, fit the profile more than perfectly. Not only can it replace coffee in taste and effect, it blows away any residual fondness I had for coffee culture (with the exception of drinking Bedouin hot coffee under the noon-day sun in the desert):

One cup of coffee for the guest, one for enjoyment and one for the sword

In short, Pu-erh provides the procedures and smooth mental stimulant effects without any of the side-effects of coffee.

Further research has really opened my eyes to a deep sea of details. While coffee and whiskey had a few things to ponder, ancient Chinese tea goes to an absurdly further level. It’s beyond even ancient beer and wine. Here are some of my notes so far:

• Pu-erh is named for a town where it could be bought. It actually comes from a range of mountains in south China Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture that have a particular soil and humidity. An ethnic group (the Dai) was growing tea there in at least the Bronze age (3000 years have passed since cultivation and trade by the Shang Dynasty) using fermentation and adding spices and milks to their drinks (versus young and green tea favored elsewhere). Tea trees planted nearly 1,000 years ago may still be found.
• Horse caravans formed a tea route with five directions and brought Pu-erh into China and eventually other countries. Here’s a map from Hou De Asian Art
  Because of the long journey the tea leaves were compressed with hot steam into cakes. The cake looks something like a giant coin and is very stable for transportation and trade. By the 1300s Pu-erh tea was one of the most important commodities in the Chinese market and by the 1600s it had become a well-known and popular tea througout China. Tibetan butter tea is made from Pu-erh, for example. China interest rose quickly again in 2007 and investors drove up prices, which prompted tea fraud (fake cake). Risk settled down in 2008 as Chinese regulators imposed rules of origin and quality.
• The fermentation process on the tea leaves makes Pu-erh unique. Microbes cause it to darken to a reddish hue and make different flavor profiles. The value of the tea therefore can increase over time. Environmental factors can lead to flavors such as peaty, musky, earthy, fruity, grassy and of course smooth (like soy milk). The time from when the tea was picked in the mountains until it was delivered by horse to the market is said to be related to how the tea looks and tastes. The size and appearance of a tea cake can make it valuable yet it also is related to fraud (hard to tell what’s inside a cake without testing it).
• The 1970s created a split in quality. Sheng Pu-erh involves the traditional process, which is not oxidized and can be stored/aged for decades before prepared to drink. The tea absorbs its environment so wherever the tea is kept can be important to the value and taste. Sheng style is often 20 or even 30 years old. Shou Pu-erh was developed in the 1970s using oxidization to accelerate the aging process so it could be used after just a couple years.

How to buy Pu-erh today

That’s just a tiny snapshot of the huge amount of background information that has formed over many centuries. I don’t recommend skipping it or ignoring it as it impacts the final step in selecting a Pu-erh. But first you have to consider a large variety of production and source factors like the source of leaf, style of farming, season, and ten different grade levels.

Leaves are sourced from bushes, cultivated trees or wild trees. Farming styles can be modern plantations (e.g. fertilizers and pesticides), ancient gardens or foraging/wild. Believe it or not the ancient tea industry is thus linked with the new and vibrant organic and sustainability movement in China. The Pu-erh vendors I have come to know tend to be highly educated and very particular about heathy food without additives or chemicals. The seasons are fairly obvious; they basically start after the Chinese new year (March) and are related to moisture. Then the ten grade levels are based on where a leaf is on the branch. Older leaves towards the trunk are high numbers while leaves near the bud end of the branch are lowest. All of that has to come before you take into account, as mentioned above, how the leaves are shaped, packaged and stored.

It’s a fantastic experience to find a good Pu-erh. In summary, my experience has been that not only does it have the stimulant effect of coffee, bringing the kind of mental clarity and energy that writers/coders crave, but also it offers the complexity of flavors that you would find in fine whiskies.

Bonus: unlike American tea bags, which are tasteless after one steep, the Pu-erh tea leaves can be reused at least five or six times. I often use them ten times. Preparation of Pu-erh is a discussion for another day. They are so full of flavor that even after being brewed many times the used leaves can be put in a pot of water to boil eggs in them or they can be added as the secret ingredient to the now famous San Francisco Burmese fermented tea salad.

Enjoy!

*My ’84 Lagavulin 17yr seemed to quadruple in value after the distillery was sold

A humorous and well-written investigation of cigarettes has been posted by the Wall Street Journal.

Under “c” alone we find cardamom oil, carob bean extract, cinnamon oil, coffee extract, coriander oil, corn syrup and an oil made from camomile flowers. Gone, apparently, are some that appear in earlier lists: “civet absolute,” for example, which turns out to be a secretion from the anal gland of the civet cat, and castoreum, a comparable secretion from the Siberian beaver.

The real story here actually is that the massive amount of data generated by litigation over risk has allowed researchers to mine for historic ingredient information. Another way to look at it is that transparency forced by compliance upon product manufacturers and providers has led to some surprises.

Note: “secretion from the anal gland of the civet cat” might sound unusual but it also has been used by the sugar industry as an “ingredient in the food additives used to add butter, caramel, and rum flavorings to sweets”.