Join
The season of coziness is upon us: wool socks, holiday movies, gingerbread cookies, gingerbread candles, gingerbread man-themed onesie pajamas. And what could be cozier than the preeminent American holiday drink, eggnog?
Unlike hot cocoa, eggnog requires attentive mixology. It’s a bit of a mystery, a combination of rich ingredients carefully blended into a stiff, transcendent drink. It’s like melted ice cream, but on purpose.
Recipes for eggnog have varied wildly across time and place, along with when and why we drink it. Around the turn of the last century, homemakers wrote about serving (virgin) eggnog to soothe their ill children. They made orange juice eggnog and egg lemonade for hot days. Eggnog was a “traditional Easter refreshment,” and it made its way into sponge cakes and pies. Chiefly, southerners and Virginians enjoyed eggnog every New Year’s Eve during the antebellum days, later popularizing their version of Virginia Eggnog in clubs in New York. Even George Washington himself purportedly mixed it up each year.