Brandy Milk Punch

Eggnog

This Eggnog is made by the glass: 30ml of brandy, 15ml of dark rum, one egg separated, 60ml of whole milk, 30ml of cream and 20ml of sugar syrup. The yolk is whisked with the syrup until pale, then everything is dry shaken for 10 to 15 seconds, shaken hard with ice for 10 to 12 and strained into a chilled double rocks glass, with nutmeg grated over. About 1.8 UK units. It is uncooked. The egg is raw, and the drink contains milk and cream. The NHS says hen eggs with the British Lion stamp can be eaten raw, including in pregnancy; drink it as soon as it is made. The Oxford Companion calls eggnog an American invention of the mid-Atlantic region in the late colonial era, with the first printed references in New Jersey and Pennsylvania newspapers in 1788. It is often said to descend from the posset, which the Companion describes as a medieval drink of curdled milk or cream and wine or ale, warmed and often thickened with eggs; we have found no primary record of that line.

Ramos Gin Fizz

A Ramos Gin Fizz is 45ml of London Dry gin, 15ml each of fresh lemon and lime juice, 30ml of sugar syrup, 30ml of egg white, 60ml of double cream, three dashes of orange flower water and two drops of vanilla extract, shaken long and hard, strained into a chilled highball with no ice and lifted with 60ml of soda water. About 1.8 UK units. It contains raw egg and dairy. Difford’s Guide, a secondary source, says Henry C. Ramos created it in 1888 at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon in New Orleans; the IBA gives the same year but a different bar. The Oxford Companion says the drink’s precise origins are unknown, that the earliest definite notice in print is from 1895, and that the likeliest period is 1892 to 1894. Difford’s quotes Stanley Clisby Arthur on 35 shaker boys at Ramos’s later bar, the Stag, during the 1915 Mardi Gras. The measures are the IBA’s. The shake is the work: cream and egg white need time to whip into a foam dense enough for the soda to push up out of the glass.

Irish Coffee

An Irish Coffee is 50ml of Irish whiskey and a teaspoon of demerara sugar stirred into 120ml of hot filter coffee in a warmed glass, with 50ml of cream whipped to the texture of cold pouring custard and floated on top over the back of a warm spoon. Nothing goes on the cream, ever. About 2.0 UK units. The Foynes Flying Boat Museum dates it to the winter of 1943 at the Foynes flying-boat terminal, when the chef Joe Sheridan put Irish whiskey into the coffee of passengers whose flight had turned back; the Oxford Companion dates it to late 1944 or early 1945. KQED tells the Buena Vista Cafe’s story that its owner and the travel writer Stanton Delaplane set about copying the drink in San Francisco on 10 November 1952; the Companion gives 1953. It is drunk through the cream: hot, sweet coffee and whiskey under a cold layer, so every sip arrives warm and cool at once. The cream is dairy, so make it for milk drinkers only.