Arroyo December 2018

KITCHEN
CONFESSIONS
Nog Days
MILK PLUS ALCOHOL EQUALS TASTY HOLIDAY CHEER.
BY LESLIE BILDERBACK
Iam not a Christmas crazy. I don’t early observe. There is never anything
Christmasy visible on Thanksgiving. The tree goes up late in December, just before
the kids come home, and I save the decorating until they can join in. We are the
last on the street to put up lights, and I am one of those last-minute shoppers. It’s not
that I don’t enjoy the season. But with the kids grown and gone, and a job to work at,
the preparation has lost its magic. (Relax. I am not going to complain about my empty
nest again this month.)
The only exception I make to pre-Christmas revelry is the immediate tuning of the
car radio to the station that plays Christmas music, and the regular purchase of eggnog.
The way I see it, drinking eggnog with one’s leftover turkey-cranberry sandwich is totally
acceptable. I love it so much.
The eggnog selection at the grocery store is crazy right now. You can get eggnog to suit
whatever stage of lactose participation you are in. And because it is so readily available, it
has become a regular item on the December shopping list. Eggnog lets me feel the holiday
spirit with very little effort, and without lining the pockets of Starbucks.
The eggnog that you buy in the grocery store is the descendant — or rather, the
amalgamation — of several old-timey milk-based beverages. Granted, milk plus alcohol
sounds gross on the surface. The combination always reminds me of the time I was served
homemade “Bailey’s,” then had to call in sick the next day. But in the Middle Ages, milk
and booze was, as they say, fancy pants. In preindustrial Northern Europe, few people
had cows, so moo juice was largely the privilege of wealthy landowners. The best chance
to find one of these milky cocktails was after a fox hunt on the estate of Lord Rupert
Brimblegoggin-Tricklebank.
The first written version of something similar to eggnog was called posset, documented
in 14th-century cookery books as a beverage made from milk, wine and spices that would
be curdled and strained. Yes, you are right if you think it sounds like whey that gets you
drunk. To that I say, “No, thank you.” Fifteenth-century recipes saw the addition of sugar,
cream and sometimes eggs, which sounds a little better. They even had special posset pots
for this, which look something like a teapot, but with two handles. If there is a recipe that
involves an obscure piece of crockery I can buy, then I am completely on board.
Nog was a 17th-century term for English ale, and wooden drinking cups were called
noggins. There are English recipes from that century that mix ale and milk, but it is
thought that the term eggnog was coined by American colonists who mixed rum — or
grog — with eggs and milk. Egg-n-grog eventually became eggnog, because here in
38 | ARROYO | 12.18