TOM & JERRY

WITH THE HOLIDAY season and chilly weather upon us who doesn’t want to cozy up a with a warm, frothy cup of eggnog? Although this might be the perennial holiday drink of recent decades, during the Golden Age of cocktails another drink was really all the rage.

Tom & Jerry is one of many cocktails to which that sporting man and bartender “Professor” Jerry Thomas lays claim. In this story, The Professor invented the drink in 1847 for a guest who’d ordered an egg beaten up in sugar. Thomas spiked the concoction with booze and hot water: “It was the one thing I’d been dreaming of for months,” he told a reporter. He named the drink Tom & Jerry after his two pet white mice “as Jeremiah P. Thomas would have sounded rather heavy, and that wouldn’t have done for a beverage.”

The story, like so many of The Professor’s yarns, is a tall tale, and numerous references are found to the drink throughout the 182Os, ’3Os and ’4Os. What we do know about the Tom & Jerry is that it hails from New England and was poured from state to state when the temperatures dropped. Traditionally batched in a china bowl and doled out in little “shaving mugs”, the frothy beverage warmed tipplers during the long, dark months of winter.

Tom & Jerry, like most fashionable potations, eventually disappeared from all but the most traditional saloons. It’s simple enough to make this eggnog variation, particularly if you’ve grown weary of that common cure for the winter doldrums.

Mix up a batch and enjoy!

TOM & JERRY

1 egg
½ ounces of simple syrup
1 ounce of dark rum
1 ounce of Cognac
Hot milk or hot water
Grated nutmeg for garnish

Separate the egg white from the yolk.
and beat them separately.
Fold the beaten eggs together
and place into a “shaving mug”,
regular mug or Irish coffee glass.
Add the sugar or simple syrup,
dark rum and brandy.

Cin-cin!