Drink of the Week: The Egg Sour

Image ALT text goes here.A coworker of mine pointed out to me recently that  a good chunk of my post on eggnog from Christmas of 2011 consisted of warnings, provisos, and disclaimers about the use of raw egg. Well, I included no such warning on my post on the amazing Pisco Sour a couple of weeks back, although that used only a pretty small amount of egg white. Today, I’m throwing all caution to the proverbial wind with a drink featuring an entire egg — yolk and all. The fact that I had about 9 bird ova in the fridge threatening to go to waste earlier this week is entirely coincidental.

The Egg Sour appears to have originated in print via Jerry Thomas’s classic bartending guide from 1887 — back in the days when refrigeration was rare and penicillin was nonexistent but people knew a tasty and seriously refreshing libation when they tasted one. This drink would also fall easily into the category of a breakfast drink. While I don’t usually go in for that sort of thing, this is certainly a first-rate, and more potent, mimosa alternative.

The Egg Sour

1 ounce cognac or brandy
1 ounce orange curaçao
1/2 ounce fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
1 large egg

Combine your cognac, curaçao, lemon juice, whole egg, and sugar, in a cocktail shaker. It’s not entirely necessary but, if you like, you can beat the egg into the rest of the ingredients to aid in the blending process. (It might be more important to observe this step if you’re attempting two Egg Sours at a time.) Next, shake all of your ingredients vigorously without ice in order to ensure a good mix. When you take off the top of your shaker, you should see a nice orangey-white froth. Add ice, shake again very vigorously, and strain into a well-chilled rocks glass. Toast the chicken, or the egg, whichever you think comes first.

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Very observant readers may notice that a couple of ingredients are similar to last week’s drink, the East India House Cocktail, and that’s no coincidence. I took advantage of my newish bottle of curaçao and the lovely, and very free, fifth of Camus Ile de Ré Fine Island Cognac for this drink and it’s a lovely combination. I’m sure other brands of cognac or brandy, such as my value-priced fall back brandy, Reynal, will work extremely nicely here as well, though they may lack a certain touch of class.

As I said above, this is one seriously refreshing but, thanks to the lemon, not quite super-sweet drink. I tried doubling the sugar up to two teaspoons for people with stronger sweettooths, but the result actually tasted less sweet and pleasing to the tongue and had similar results with an entire teaspoon of simple syrup. Interesting.

This is the point in the blog when I usually comment on some cultural or personal aspect of a given beverage, but today’s drink is just tasty in a way that’s totally out of context with much of anything else. Maybe I should have spent more time defending my use of a raw egg.

  

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