Tom and Jerry, eggnog’s hot and spicy cousin, is the subject of my most recently blog post for Etsy–you can read it here. Although the drink was invented in the 1840s, it had an inexplicable return to popularity in the 1940s. While trying to uncover the reason, I came across this full-age add for The Rums of Puerto Rico, from LIFE magazine, February 23, 1953.
The above gathering is clearly very manly. Below, a few cocktail suggestions using the “Greatest Winter Drink,” rum. The full-page ad can be viewed here.
I LOVE that pic!! So manly :D
I did some colonial beverage surfing for a blog post http://seventreesfarm.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/flip-bounce-or-shrub/ earlier this year. Our ancestors liked their booze, but in some strange manifestations.
Are you ever going to have another go at drinking like a colonial??
It is so manly, that was my first thought, too! :D
I don’t know if I’m going to do the full day again..maybe. I’ve certainly been in training recently. But I have been curious to actually try a flip, or another drink heated with a hot poker. So in your recipe, the poker was plunged into the drink after it was all mixed up?
From what I’ve read, innkeepers premixed everything but the eggs so when someone ordered that drink, they poured it into a heated mug, added beaten eggs, then stirred with the hot poker.
The heat of the poker is supposed to make everything froth up. They actually made special tools for this that had more surface than a poker, so maybe the added heat did the trick. I can’t imagine getting a poker hot enough to make an egg flip foam over the mug, but maybe it’s part of the whole manly skill thing ;)
I would think the eggs would curdle, and you’d have scrambled egg cocktail? no?
They do hot poker drinks at the cocktail part of momofuku on 13th st. I have yet to experience it but it was actually described to me as “mansome”.
I bet it’s so fricken mansome.
I’m a glassblower, and the first thing that popped into my mind here was “you could totally do this with a punty!” (A punty is a stainless steel rod used to make solid glass objects or transfer blown objects) They can get very hot though-much hotter than they would in a wood fire I would think. Cherry red hot.
Do you think that would work? I think the egg foam would be awesome but it does seem to me like you’d just end up with a strange boozy form of scrambled egg weirdness.
I think that would probably work perfectly! But I don’t t know what your results will be. I’ve wondered the same thing: how do you not get scrambled eggs? When I’ve made flips from other recipes, it involved slowly pouring the liquid back and forth between two pitchers, it tempers the eggs, so you get a warm custard instead of a scramble, I’ve used my electric mixer to slowly blend the eggs and hot liquid as well.
So although I do believe there are drinks that are heated with fire pokers, I’m unconvinced the flip is one of them. But I’m going to try it next winter!
BTW glassblowers are badasses:)