Blair Reynolds is a Tikiphile and all around ne’erdowell living in Portland, OR, who normally blasts his drivel on TraderTiki.com
Winter has arrived! Or perhaps it hasn’t in your neck of the woods, but for most of us in the Mixoloseum, it’s time to heat up hearth and home as we put away our summer coolers, mix our last fall cocktails, and start picking up some winter warmers. Yes, there’s a drinking reason for every season.
One of my favorites and a point I pressure every year around this time, is the Tom & Jerry. This classic was first transcribed by Jerry Thomas, who also lays claim to its creation. You can see his recipe below.
However, in Imbibe!
Thomas’ recipe above is still the basis, though a few tweaks make it all the merrier. Here’s the recipe I use for a small batch, suitable for just over a dozen small punch cups.
Tom and Jerry Batter
- 3 eggs, separated
- 1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 tsp Powdered Cinnamon
- 1 tsp Ground Cloves
- 1 tsp Ground Allspice
Whisk the egg whites and Cream of Tartar manually or in a Kitchenaid until extremely stiff. Stir the Yolks, sugar and spice until a solid batter is formed. Fold the yolk batter into the egg whites.
That Cream of Tartar really helps to keep the batter foamy for quite a bit longer. Without it, the batter will collapse into a rather gross-looking mush in a matter of hours.
To serve, place in your punch glass or mug one healthy scoop of the batter, your brown liquor combination of choice, and a smidge of hot milk, with nutmeg on top. It helps a lot to fill the cups with boiling water to heat them up prior to serving. Heated milk is a vast improvement over water in adding to the fullness of flavor and richness of texture, but have it either way. As far as the liquor, that’s up to you. For last night’s, I went with straight El Dorado 5, though El Dorado 12 would definitely be a vast improvement. Any dark, lightly sweet rum will do. Combine that with brandy and you’ve got a real crowd-pleaser.
One of the most fun things about the venerable Tom and Jerry though has to be the punchbowl sets. You can search for one on eBay, though you’re likely to spend a lot less checking out your local Salvation Army or Goodwill. I got mine pictured above from a local vintage store, Lounge Lizard.
Once you make your first batch of this stuff, it gets a bit addictive, as it is so easy to make, even in someone else’s kitchen. So whip up a batch and head on over to chat about more winter drinks in the Mixoloseum Chat. Here’s to your next round of Tom and Jerry’s, and a festive winter drinking season!
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I have eyeballed this recipe often. Great to see the step by step instructions. Was going to do some hot buttered rum for a tree trimming party — think I’m going to have to switch it up to this. Thanks!
Thanks for the nice tweaks, especially the cream of tartar — I whipped up a batch on a what has hitherto been the coldest night of the year and it was just perfect! (I added 1 barspoon of St. Liz because I ran out of ground allspice, but maybe that also relates to my comment below)
I am curious as to why you didn’t include the 1/2 glass of rum that Thomas’ recipe called for — was this due to scaling (i.e., a 1/2 glass for a punchbowl becomes insignificant when scaled down by approximately 1/4th)? Or was it due to taste?
Brett,
thanks for noticing. First things first, the adding the rum while making the batter can tend to make it wear down a bit faster, due to the increased liquid content. Though that may just be a superstition on my part.
It also helps to have the non-alcoholic batter to add hot milk to, so that kids or teetotalers can enjoy it too. Besides, you’re going to be putting plenty of Rum in it when serving.
I like the St. Liz idea, might have to use that in my next batch!