Well, it’s December. And in the spirit of the holidays, I’m dedicating this entire month to the most festive of festive drinks: eggnog! Sure, most people (that I know, anyway) don’t like eggnog, or had a bad experience with it at the office Christmas party, but hey, Jerry Thomas has way too many recipes for it (in fact, more than I could fit in this month), so when else am I going to do it? This first one technically isn’t eggnog, but it has eggs in it and is pretty similar to the other recipes, so I’m including it.

Here’s my egg-related news — this article about the effects of two recent ballot measures on egg producers. I don’t actually agree with the position; I think they’re not really telling the truth, but it’s an article nonetheless. Clearly an odd publication, though — “Free Minds and Free Markets” is their tagline.

148. Egg Flip

[N.B.: I halved the following recipe and it made two good-sized servings.]

• Put a quart of ale in a tinned saucepan on the fire to boil; in the mean time, beat up the yolks of four, with the whites of two eggs, adding four tablespoonfuls of brown sugar and a little nutmeg; pour on the ale by degrees [This means pour the ale into the eggs], beating up, so as to prevent the mixture from curdling; then pour back and forward repeatedly [BUT SLOWLY!] from vessel to vessel, raising the hand to as great a height as possible—which process produces the smoothness and frothing essential to the good quality of the flip. This is excellent for a cold, and, from its fleecy appearance, is sometimes designated “a yard of flannel.”

Tasting Notes

BN: Be careful with this one! As (not) shown in the gif, I poured this way too fast at first and it went splashing everywhere. And, make sure you don’t cook the eggs with the beer (add it slowly, bit by bit). So, it was a bit of a challenge, but once it was made, it was very tasty! Like a sweet, smooth, frothy beer — you can see how much froth was made just in the one pour in the gif. You don’t really taste the eggs but you get smoothness from them, a silkiness that makes it go down easy. And, weirdly, the heat seems to really bring out the hops in the beer, so don’t use an IPA or anything like that or else it might be too much.

PiC: It’s quite good! It’s got a little bit of a weird bitterness from the beer, but I really like the froth and the brown-sugar-iness of it.