The Bar Journal

Egg Cocktails are resurgence of interest in egg-based cocktails has reinvented the eggnog in time for Christmas.

One of the cocktail’s earliest ingredients, dating back to pre-Prohibition times, the egg is the latest traditional cocktail ingredient to be resurrected by bar tenders.

Derived from a British drink called a posset, which combined eggs and milk, the eggnog has traditionally been associated with Christmas. Having long been regarded as out of date and old-fashioned, the egg cocktail revival is now seeing a resurgence of interest in eggnog, which is becoming a fashionable festive drink once more.

Aside from eggnog, egg cocktails were also popular as a hangover cure (also particularly useful over the festive period) and were drunk raw with neat vodka.

However, eggs in alcoholic drinks can be traced back to the “flip”. Flips can be dated back to the 1690’s when egg drinks mixed with milk and beer or wine were mixed into smaller individual cocktail batches. A precursor to the modern cocktail, gradually, spirits and other ingredients slowly began to replace the beer and on site mixing occurred. From flips, by the 1800’s the use of egg had changed into “fizzes” – morning drinks providing vitamins, protein and hangover cures.

According to Drink Dogma, perhaps the most legendary of fizzes was the Ramos Gin Fizz.

The product of the Ramos brothers’ Imperial Cabinet in New Orleans, this drink, often called the New Orleans Fizz was a closely guarded secret until after Prohibition when the Ramos brothers only let the recipe out “to help ease the pain of prohibition amongst their previous customers”.

However, by the time of fizzes, the use of eggs in alcoholic drinks was already diminishing. Writes cocktail expert, David Wondrich in Imbibe:

“Formerly, a major part of day-to-day drinking, by the middle of the nineteenth century drinks made with eggs had seen their role greatly diminished. There were exceptions. Some fizzes used eggs, or at least parts of them. There was a Flip of sorts, that took the might quaff of Colonial days – when Flips were made from quarts of ale and gills of strong rum, thickened with eggs and sugar and poured back and forth from pitcher to pitcher – and shrank into something that would fit in a cocktail glass” …

One of the key characteristics of the egg as a cocktail ingredient is that it can act as an emulsifier, forging the independent ingredients together.

As A Companion For The Young Imbiber explains, when an egg is shaken with a cocktail the proteins become physically agitated and then recollect near air, drastically changing the texture of drinks and creating a foamy layer on top. Alone, this foam would cave quickly, but the presence of citrus juice in many drinks functions as a stabilizer, increasing the longevity of the foam.

Re-discovering the flavour and texture enhancing properties of eggs, US & UK bartenders are beginning to re-visit classic egg cocktails and invent innovate contemporary ones. 

Marian Beke and his team at Nightjar in London have created their own flip made with goose eggs or quile eggs depende on the season, while elsewhere, bartenders are creating new recipes for whiskey, bourbon and pisco sours.

SALUTE !