The origins of toasting and a recipe for aged eggnog

Just as food has its place in history and cultural traditions, so do beverages. Author and food scholar Darra Goldstein has teamed up with Cortney Burns and Richard Martin for a series of books on preservation. We've already talked to her about Preserved: Vegetables and Preserved: Condiments. 

Volume three of the series, Preserved: Drinks, catalogs how early alcoholic fermentations were offered to deities, later became rituals of fraternity, and continued to serve as medicinals and in festivities.

Evan Kleiman: Could you talk a bit about the historical role of fermented beverages in times of celebration and mourning?

Darra Goldstein: People have been making alcoholic beverages for centuries, dating back to antiquity and even earlier, in China, and they did it by fermenting grains. Because it was such an involved process, and also because the resulting alcohol, which you get from distilled liquor, made people feel very heady and liberated and kind of wild, it became closely associated with the gods and with rituals. We need only think about Bachus and how he is always portrayed with grapes. But the earlier beverages were done with with grains, particularly barley, and also rice in China. 

In Africa, in certain parts of Africa, in many different cultures, you honor the deceased by pouring an alcoholic beverage onto the ground. In a certain way, it's like when wealthy Egyptians were buried with all kinds of food to help carry them to the afterlife, this is another way in which life, and life-giving substances, were part of mourning. When we think about whiskey, you know it means "water of life." That's the etymology of the word. So I feel like all of these beverages somehow connect to a larger life cycle.

Alcohols, such as brandy, sherry, bourbon, and dark rum, act as a preservative in aged eggnog. Photo by David Malosh. 

How did the modern toast come about?

The modern toast really evolved from much older practices in medieval times. In England, there was a particular drink called a posset and it was traditionally drunk in a loving cup. A loving cup had two handles, and it was always bros, you know. I don't know [what] the women were doing at home, but when the bros got together, they each had a handle of this cup, and they drank it together, and it was a sign of fraternity. And that eventually morphed into toasting, but the actual toast had more to do with the practice of wassail at the winter solstice, when this drink was heated by the fireplace and bread was often dropped in and toasted by the fire, and words of cheer and songs were sung, and that became the toast. 

When I think of wassail and hot fermented beverages, I think of these hot spiced drinks that are synonymous with the holidays. Do we know where they first originated, and what kind of  variations do we see?

I think the earliest ones were more often based on ale and not so much the spiced wine. That was a later development, if we're talking about the British Isles and that part of the world,  sometimes wine was used, but the spices were very expensive until early modern times, because they had to be imported from very distant places. And so they were used rather sparingly by most people, and it was a mark of a special occasion to spice your food and have something particularly what we call the warm spices like cinnamon and nutmeg and ginger and sometimes cardamom and cloves, these very aromatic spices that kind of add heat to the body, if you have enough, but also if you just think of the spices being mulled, or if they're used in baking, the wonderful smell that you get In the house. So that became associated with holiday time.

And where does Scandinavia come into the picture when it comes to these drinks?

I lived in Sweden for a year while I was in graduate school, and I loved the winter time there, the Christmas season, because it became like a fairytale. It was so dark, there was very little sun, but there were lights and candles everywhere, and Christmas markets and special gingerbreads. And this drink that I had never heard of called julmust, which is Christmas, if you think about the English word must, which is the freshly pressed juice of grapes or apples. So it's like Christmas juice or Christmas beverage. 

This drink is made from malted rye and malted barley. It has so many spices and dried fruits in it, and it's allowed to age. In our book, we fermented it. It's not always fermented but part of what we're trying to do with some of these recipes is give them a twist. Then you add carbonated water. We use a ginger turmeric bug that we make, and it makes it a sparkly drink that, I think for Americans, could be compared to Dr. Pepper but it's spicier and it's less sweet. 

It's actually kind of a strange drink. I had never tasted anything like it but the Swedes go wild for it and it's only sold during Christmas time and then again at Easter a little bit. Something like 50% of all soft drinks there are sold during the Christmas season and are this julmust. The syrup for it is made only by one company. It's a proprietary recipe that they've been using since 1910 and they license it to a few different companies that then mix it with carbonated water and turn it into their own brand. 

Along with her co-authors Cortney Burns and Richard Martin, food historian Darra Goldstein has traveled the world to find unusual beverages from different countries. Photo by Ashley Weeks Cart.

Is it kind of like liquid gingerbread?

That's what we call it in the book because it seemed like that was the most evocative phrase for it, if you can picture liquid gingerbread. It's very gingery, a little bit pungent. There's pepper in it, raisins, cardamom, juniper berries, which give it this nice little earthy note, aniseed, coriander, mace, cloves, star anise, vanilla, and lots of ginger — fresh ginger root. It's pretty awesome but for people who haven't had it, it might be an acquired taste.

Let's talk about eggnog. It's such an odd word to a modern ear. What's the etymology of it? Tell us a little bit about making it and why store-bought versions are so often inferior.

I am a real eggnog lover. I just adore it. I love the billows of whipped cream, and I definitely like it when it's been spiked with either rum or bourbon. So eggnog, no one is completely sure where the word itself comes from. The egg part is self-evident, because it has lots and lots of eggs, which serve to give it body, but also are thickeners. When you use the yolk and then when you whip the whites, it also lightens the thick mixture that you have created. 

The second half of the word the nog, it might come from the Old English word "grog," which refers to a strong beer, or it could come from noggin, which used to be a word for a small wooden cup. But no one is completely sure. 

The problem with commercial eggnog, I just find it so cloying. It's almost sticky because it has so many stabilizers in it. Sometimes, gelatin is used. Sometimes carrageenan, and if you make it from scratch, you use milk, cream, eggs, and if you want to spike it, you use all different kinds of liquors to add to it and some sweetener. If you want to spice it, as we tend to do for almost all of our drinks in this book, you can add some ginger, vanilla, allspice, and a little bit of cardamom.

Talk to me a little bit about aged eggnog. Aging eggs seems like such an oxymoron. Why does it work?

Well, don't think about the thousand-year-old Chinese eggs, which are a very different kind of experience. What you do is you make the eggnog base. With the eggs, we use bourbon, brandy, sherry, and rum. Each has a different note that it adds. The brandy and the sherry are fruity. The bourbon has that wonderful sweetness. The dark rum has that really nice caramel flavor, and we also add maple syrup as the sweetener. 

The alcohol really serves as a preservative, so you can keep it for a long time, and all you do is just mix all of these things together, along with the spices, and then just put it in the refrigerator, age it for three weeks, so that all of the flavors blend. Then, you can use the base to make eggnog with milk and cream à la minuit, whenever you have a craving for eggnog. The base will keep for up to a year, so you can have it from season to season. You just need to shake the jar once a month, so that everything gets mixed up together and the solid part doesn't remain settled at the bottom of the jar.

As a person who loves to tinker with things, have you ever used that base, which is like a spiked custard in any kind of baking?

I haven't used it in baking although I think I really should. It would be delicious. What we did include in the book is a recipe for a kind of sabayon. All you do is take the eggnog base and strain it so, obviously, you don't have these whole spices in it. Then, you just beat it. I would recommend using an electric beater, otherwise you're going to be standing there for a long time. Then, put it in a double-boiler to make sure that it won't burn and continue to whip it until it's ethereally light and it has these beautiful soft mounds. Then, just spoon it into your mouth. It's really a beautiful dessert. I think I should try making a custard pie with it. That would be wonderful.

Preserved: Drinks is the third book in a six volume series about food preservation. Photo courtesy of Hardie Grant.