| Cooking with Katja | ||
| Caudles and Possets: The Original Egg Nog? Cooking with Katja, 1/2007 I flop into the car after a long day at work, kiss Grendel hello in greeting, and he promptly plops a printout on my lap. “Something from Salon.com I thought you’d want to read. It’s about the history of egg nog,” he explains. As we sit at dinner munching away on nachos, I skim through the article, “Nothing But Nog.” I harrumph. What’s wrong, Grendel asks? The author cites unsupported accounts as to the egg drink’s origin being in the 18th Century in Virginia or maybe as far back as the Jamestown Colony in 1607, I say, and he claims that the celebratory egg drink is an American invention since it contains rum. Interesting theory and, yes, I know Salon.com does not attempt to offer up serious culinary history research, I explain, but egg drinks date back to the early Middle Ages and were incredibly popular in Renaissance Europe. No, they weren’t called egg nog—they were caudels and possets. While they were originally medicinal cures rather than beverages per se, they have marked similarities to the holiday drink in question. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of the word “egg nog” is in 1825. 1 “Caudel,” however, dates back several centuries to as early as 1297; it’s a “a warm drink consisting of thin gruel mixed with wine or ale, sweetened and spiced, given chiefly to sick people, especially women in childbed and their visitors.” It was a “heartening” drink, consumed at breakfast or bedtime; it was quite thick, almost more of an egg custard or zabaglione (although not whisked or as sweet) 2, due to the addition of bread crumbs or cooked grain. 3 This makes sense, if you know the Humoral Theory, the doctrine that dominated medieval cuisine and medicine; in short, all living things contain a balance of four humors with four qualities (cold, hot, moist, dry), and illness was caused by an excess of one or more of these humors. Foods with opposing humors to the ailment were thus given to bring all the humors back into balance. Fevers, for example, were treated with milk dishes, which were believed to be cold and moist (not surprisingly). Fresh milk was considered to be too cold and moist for healthy adults unless drunk sparingly in the spring, outside, and “with an unagitated mind,” 4 although it was considered fit for children, the elderly, and the infirm to drink. 5 Andrew Boorde, a respected Renaissance-era physician, advised that anyone with a “hot liver” would benefit from drinking milk warmed with ale. 6 By 1483, there are caudels being made for not strictly medicinal purposes with wine and sugar sans the cooked grain, and a 1612 citation has the drink thickened with the egg yolks seen in modern-day egg nog recipes. 7 Caudel recipes in Forme of Curye and other medieval cookbooks were made not only with eggs but also with ground almonds or even fish (mussels and salmon) as the main thickening ingredient. Fish nog?! Actually, again, this makes sense; when you count up the 40 days of Lent as well as Sundays, Fridays, and other holy days, you realize that over a third of the days in a medieval year were ones in which the Church forbade the eating of meat and white meats (dairy). 8 The following is a typical caudel recipe containing eggs, wine, sugar, and spices (including saffron, mace, cinnamon, galingale—similar to ginger—and gillyflowers, but no nutmeg): Cawdelle Ferry 9 Take rawe yolkes of eyroun and trie hem fro the whyte; and take gode wyne, and warme it ouer the fire in a potte, And caste ther-to the yolkes, and stere hit wyl, butte lete hit nowt boyle til it be thikke; and then caste ther-to Sugre, Safroun, & Salt, Maces, Gelofres, and Galyngale y-ground smal, & flowre of Cinnamon; & whan thow dressyst yn, caste blanke pouder ther-on. Note, however, that there isn’t any milk or cream, as there is in modern egg nog. So, a caudel isn’t exactly the same thing, is it? No, but a similar beverage, a posset, is darned close, and it definitely exists in England before the 1700s. What’s a posset? Documented as far back as 1440, it’s “[a] drink of hot milk curdled with ale, wine, or other liquor, often with sugar, spices, or other ingredients, formerly much used as a delicacy and as a remedy for colds or other afflictions.” 10 It so resembles the modern drink that noted food historian Karen Hess called possets “warm eggnog.” 11 The recipe in her edition of the 17th Century Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery even includes nutmeg in the spices. A slightly later recipe differs from modern frothy egg nog only in its use of sack as opposed to rum: To make a Posset Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook, 4th Edition, 1678 Take the yolks of twenty eggs, then have a pottle of good thick sweet cream, boil it with good store of whole cinamon, and stir it continually on a good fire, then strain the eggs with a little raw cream; when the cream is well boiled and tasteth of the spice, take it off the fire, put in the eggs, and stir them well into the cream, being pretty slick, have some sack in a posset pot or deep silver bason, half a pound of double refined sugar, and some fine grated nutmeg, warm it in the bason and pour in the cream and eggs, the cinamon being taken out, pour it as high as you can hold the skillet, let it spatter in the bason to make it froth. It will make a most excellent posset; then hace loaf-sugar finely beaten, and strow on it a good store. Although possets were initially medicinal like caudels, these thick eggy drinks were also drunk simply as beverages. In contrast to caudels, possets were a celebratory drink; they were enjoyed as the toasting drink at weddings through to the 19th Century. The famed diarist Samuel Pepys mentions enjoying a posset while at a wedding in the mid 1600s. 12 As part of the tradition, a ring was often tossed into the drink, with the thought that whoever found the ring would be the next to wed. 13 I do agree with the Salon article author that the use of rum in egg nog recipes is likely due to the cheap availability of that spirit in early America, much like the use of sack, wine, or ale in the English recipes I’ve cited above. Unlike the Salon author, however, I think it is not only “tempting to assume that egg nog is British,” I think the recipes in period cookbooks fairly well support that the origins of the drink lie in the Old World, not the New World. In his defense, I’m betting that author doesn’t have a bookcase full of culinary history references! <smile> |
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| Notes: | ||
| For some great images go here. | ||
| 1. “A drink in which the white and yolks of egg are stirred up with hot beer, cider, wine, or spirits.” Pg. 498, The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, 1996. 2. Pg. 172, An Ordinance of Pottage: An Edition of the Fifteenth Century Culinary Recipes in Yale University’s MS Beinecke 163, Constance B. Hieatt, Prospect Books, 1988. 3. Pg. 141, Food and Drink in Britain, C. Anne Wilson, Academy Chicago Publishers, 1991. 4. Pg. 75, Eating Right in the Renaissance, Ken Albala, University of California Press, 2002. 5. Pg. 104, “Medieval Britain,” Maggie Black, A Taste of History: 10,000 Years of Food in Britain, Peter Brears, et. al. English Heritage Press, 1993. 6. Pg. 85, British Food, Colin Spencer, Grub Street, 2003. 7. Pg. 224, The Compact Oxford English Dictionary. 8. Pg. 172, An Ordinance of Pottage. 9. Harleian Manuscript #279 (15th Century English) from Curye on Inglysch, edited by Constance B. Hieatt, The Early English Text Society, 1985. 10. Harleian Manuscript #279 (15th Century English) from Curye on Inglysch, edited by Constance B. Hieatt, The Early English Text Society, 1985. 11. Pg. 133, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery, Karen Hess, Columbia University Press, 1995 12. http://www.pepysdiary.com 13. Ivan Day’s Historic Food website |
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