Nog It, Baby!

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

In my book, the winter holidaze ain’t a daze without the egg nog! I’ve never quite understood why people turn up their noses at this delicious concoction. For Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve I’ve often made egg nog and marveled at how quickly people turn up their noses when I offer them a glass. I think, perhaps, too many folks have tried the store-bought version of the stuff, which I confess is sort-of nasty. The secret of good nog is freshness, not preservatives, and just-grated nutmeg.

Now, I think I can change folks’ minds in one of two ways: either getting someone to try the delicious, seasonal egg nog flavored “shakes” at a local fast-food roast beef chain; or getting folks to try my recipe. This week, I’ll try to convince folks of the latter.

We’re not quite sure where this drink came from, but we pretty much can attribute its emergence to two things: refrigeration and mass transit. Apparently it’s as old as the United States, but egg nog was only relatively recently a “popular” drink because milk, cream, and booze were fairly expensive back in the pre-refrigeration days. Only rich people, in other words, could afford the stuff. The advent of refrigeration and mass-market dairy farms led to the increasing availability of the basic ingredients for the stuff. In the states, egg nog was made with bourbon, brandy, or rum, while in Central America the stuff is made with cognac.

Second, there’s planes, trains and automobiles: over the last century it has become easier and easier to traverse large, geographical distances in shorter and shorter amounts of time. This intensification of “speed” (something that this French thinker, Paul Virilio, says we can study as “dromoscopy”) has led to a new, unanticipated crisis of holiday relations: the possibility that annoying relatives and their spouses and children can come over for the holidays.

That’s right, the airplane and automobile make it easier for your annoying aunt Edna to alight on your doorstep with cheesy presents from the dollar store—you know, like muscle cream and useless telephone accessories for LAN lines—and four hours of stories about people you don’t know that she tells every freakin’ year. Then there’s your annoying cousins who have been having children who pee their pants on the couch (which is why your mom bought the plastic seat covers) and make your parents give you grief every year for still being a bachelor and not producing them grandbabies to spoil because you were not good enough to spoil when you were a kid.

In other words, it's obvious that egg nog has increased in popularity because everyone needs a little buzz to put up with these annoying people in your family, not to mention the frustration of foiling the expectations of all these people who try to pretend holidays should be cheery and bright like those Hollywood movies. What’s the phrase? Oh yes: Bah! Humbug! What we bachelors need is a buzz to get us through to the middle of January! We need an elixir to transform our humbugs into “whatever, man!” Here it is! I bring you delicious relief!

Serves/Makes: 20

• 12 eggs, separated
• 6 cups milk
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 2 cups bourbon
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brandy
• 2 teaspoons ground nutmeg