The Forgotten Holiday Drink That's Better Than Eggnog!

Before eggnog became a Christmas standard, there was another drink. Hot, tangled with spice, thick with batter, and strong enough to make a cold night feel like nothing. This was the drink that used to ring in the season, the Tom and Jerry. Welcome back to History in a Glass. I'm Josh, your guide in this tipsy time machine through history. Now that the turkey comas are behind us, we're officially rolling into the holiday season. And for the next few weeks of December, I want to share some historic drinks that you can actually serve at your Christmas and holiday parties, giving you plenty of time to get your ingredients ready before the guests arrive. This is the time of year when the weather turns cold, and at least where I'm from, there's already snow on the ground, so I'm starting to look for drinks that actually warm you up. Today we all think of eggnog as the classic holiday drink, but back in the 1800s, eggnog had a cousin that taverns didn't just serve, they practically geared up for all season long. This was the drink that signaled that winter had arrived, and it was something they took seriously enough to keep on hand from November to March. So if you're ready, grab your ingredients, because we're bringing back a forgotten Christmas classic. If you walked into an American bar at the mid-1800s at the start of winter, you'd know right away who took the season seriously. A big ceramic bowl would be sitting on the counter, brought out from storage like holiday decoration. The same bowl every year, and next to it, a row of porcelain shaving mugs, waiting for service. Behind the bar, a pot of hot water or milk stayed warm from morning until close. Now this wasn't the kind of drink that you would just throw together on the fly like a stone fence or even a rattle skull. Bar keeps had to prep for this one. They'd mix up a big bowl of egg batter thick with sugar and spice, and that bowl would sit on the counter as long as the weather stayed cold. Order a Tom and Jerry, and the bar keep would grab a hot mug, add the booze, top it off with something steaming, and then scoop a spoonful of that batter right on top. And then they'd finish it off with the garnish that shows up a lot in 19th century tavern drinks, especially the hot ones, some nutmeg. That bowl didn't just signal a drink, it signaled the season. When the Tom and Jerry bowl came out of storage, the holidays and winter had officially arrived. Now if you're like me and you hear Tom and Jerry, you probably think of the cartoon Cat and Mouse. But way before they were duking it out, this cocktail was running around causing its own kind of chaos. And trust me, the story behind it is just as messy as it is fun. Now Jerry Thomas, our favorite 19th century bartender, loved to tell everyone he cooked up the Tom and Jerry in 1847. He said it so many times, it ended up carved into history, even in his obituary. Newspapers back then just rolled with it, but plot twist, that's not exactly how it went down. The earliest verified reference we have comes from the Salem Gazette all the way back in 1827, describing a fully formed Tom and Jerry, eggs, sugar, spice, and rum, decades before Thomas was old enough to tend a bar. Some kid drank it and they called him perfectly deranged, which honestly is kind of the best endorsement for an 1820s drink. You see more mentions through the 40s, mostly up in my neck of the woods here in Chile, New England. So by the time that Jerry Thomas was mixing his first one in New Haven, Connecticut, this drink was old news up in that area. What Thomas did do was spread it and help make it famous. His 1862 guide took the Tom and Jerry nationwide. After the Civil War, it was like a holiday party guest that never left. Taverns would haul out the bowl, whip up the batter, and start serving Tom and Jerry's to anyone looking to warm up. It became a holiday tradition, and outside the tavern, families picked it up and it became an American holiday fixture. And then like all good old school cocktails that we come across on this channel, it kind of just vanishes for a while. By the early 1900s, folks were moving on from hot, frothy drinks, and the Tom and Jerry was described as extinct as the Dodo. Except it wasn't gone everywhere. The upper Midwest held onto it like a winter secret. In Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas, families kept making the batter every year. They served it with milk and kept the tradition alive. And thanks to the cocktail revival, the Tom and Jerry is sneaking back into our Decembers. And that's where we pick up the tradition to review this classic. To make this one, we'll be using the earliest printed recipe we have, the one made famous by Jerry Thomas in 1862. And like most tavern staples at the time, this recipe is made to be shared, and the batch is large. To not waste ingredients, I'm scaling to a half batch here, which should be a perfect fit for modern parties. For info on the full batch and the ingredients for this scaled down version, be sure to check out the description. Let's take a look at what we need for our Tom and Jerry, starting off as always with the booze. All right, we'll need some brandy. And once again, here I am using Pierre Ferrand 1840. This is one of the closest things we have today to the kind of cognac Americans were drinking in the mid 1800s. It's higher proof, pot still in style, and modeled on an actual 1840s cognac. This is what brandy tasted like when the Tom and Jerry was in its prime. Next, we're going to use some Jamaican rum, and here I'm using Smith & Cross. Jamaican rum back then was pot still, high ester, and pretty intense. Exactly what bartenders used to cut through rich, sweet holiday drinks like this. Smith & Cross gives you the same exact old school punch and aroma. And then we'll need a Santa Cruz rum, and here I'm using Croisan light aged rum. Santa Cruz rum originally came from St. Croix, and Croisan is the modern rum that still is being made there. It's light, clean, column distilled, the same profile bartenders used in the 1800s. And this should keep the drink balanced. We'll also need a hot liquid. Now, Jerry Thomas used hot water in 1862, but by the late 1800s, people were serving their Tom and Jerry with hot milk. It gave the drink more body and turned it into a proper holiday tradition. That's what we're going to go with here today. Still historically accurate, just a little bit more in tune with the holiday spirit. And then we're going to need to make our batter. And for this, we're going to use six eggs, about a pound of sugar, and I'm using superfine sugar here. We need about a half an ounce of the Jamaican rum, about three quarters of a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, and a quarter teaspoon of cloves, and a quarter teaspoon of ground allspice. So step one, let's get that batter together. We'll start by separating the eggs. We're going to put whites in one bowl, yolks in another. By the 1820s, Tom and Jerry wasn't just a drink. The name became slang for guys causing trouble. In England, they even called sketchy taverns Tom and Jerry shops. So the name already came loaded with rowdy, barroom energy before Americans ever started pouring it. We're going to whip those whites until they're nice and stiff. Funny enough, when MGM launched the Tom and Jerry cartoon in the 1940s, the name actually made sense. The original slang meant troublemakers, brawlers, chaos, which is basically the entire plot of every episode. In the Midwest, Tom and Jerry batter used to show up in grocery stores every December, just sitting there in tubs near the eggnog, kind of like a some assembly required holiday cocktail starter. And in the other bowl, we're going to mix our yolks with the sugar, spices, and half an ounce of Jamaican rum until it's all smooth. People actually bought full Tom and Jerry sets, big, decorated bowls with matching mugs. They came out once a year with all the Christmas decorations. Now you might be able to find them in antique shops if you're lucky. Then we'll gently fold the yolk mixture into the whipped whites. Here you want a fluffy, light batter that would sit on top of the drink like a little cloud. Some of the early versions threw baking soda into the batter. When the hot liquid hit, the whole drink foamed up like a Apparently, bartenders moonlighted as chemists. Civil War soldiers made Tom and Jerry's in their winter encampments. When the war ended, they carried the tradition back home with them. Basically, the 1860s version of a viral trend. All right, now that the batter is done, you can see how much we have here. And I'm going to guess this is probably good enough for about 20 or more drinks. So we're going to set this aside. We'll need it in just a second. Now to build this the way that Jerry Thomas actually wrote it down in 1862, we're going to start with the warm mug. Now I have this festive glass here to use and I have some hot water in here. So I'm just going to dump this out. We want to keep this glass warm. The whole point of this is to not cool down the drink. So the same way that we use a chilled glass for cool drinks, we want to use a warm glass for this drink here. And now we're ready to build this drink. And we're actually going to start with the batter. Now, Jerry Thomas is very clear on this point. One heaping tablespoon goes straight into the bottom of the mug. And this is the foundation of the Tom and Jerry. And then next we'll add the spirit. So we're going to use one ounce of Pierre Ferrand 1840 here, a half an ounce of Smith and Cross Jamaican rum, and then also a half an ounce of Cruzan light rum. This follows the adepts mixture Thomas notes where bartenders mix brandy, Jamaican rum, and Santa Cruz rum for a more complex flavor. Next, we'll add the heat by topping it with three to four ounces of hot milk. And here I'm going to leave just a little bit of room at the top of the glass so I can top it with some fresh batter. After the milk goes in, we'll give it a gentle stir. Nothing too aggressive. We just want to bring the batter and the booze together. And then we're going to finish it off by grading some fresh nutmeg on top. And that's it. Let's go ahead and build it. Newspapers from the 1870s joke that bartenders dreaded the first Tom and Jerry order of the season. You can almost hear someone shouting from the back. I'm not whipping that batter again. Some bars up in Wisconsin still have full holiday rooms dedicated to serving Tom and Jerry's. Same mugs every year, same setup, like a little time capsule from the 1890s that nobody updated. And there we have our 19th century Christmas and winter tavern staple, the Tom and Jerry. Let's go ahead and give it a try. Cheers. All right. So first taste, I think this is pretty good. It definitely is something that would warm you up in the winter. It's hot, rich and sweet and definitely has that 19th century taste. But the spices keep it balanced. You do get a little bit of that heat from the brandy on the way down, but then it just sits in your stomach from that warm milk and it just warms your entire body. I wasn't sure what to think of hot milk with booze, but the milk here gives it a creamy weight that totally screams holiday drink. It's frothy, comforting and really not too strong at all. I totally get why bars used to make entire bowls of this and serve it all winter. So here we are with the drink that once reigned in holidays long before eggnog stepped into the spotlight. Over time, the Tom and Jerry faded from bars as American drinking moved in a different direction. Service got faster, cocktails got colder, and the labor of whipping egg batter didn't fit behind the bar anymore. But the drink didn't lose its charm. This thing's actually really good. It's still a piece of American winter history built on simple ingredients and a little heat. The heart of it holds up. No shortcuts, no syrups, just eggs, sugar, spice, and warmth. The same elements that carried it through the 1800s made it a yearly ritual for so many families. And now you've got everything you need to bring that tradition back to life. So if you mix this up, think of it as reviving a slice of the 1800s. A drink meant to take the edge off a cold night and bring some cheer into the room. If you try it, let me know in the comments how it turned out. Did you stick with milk? Did you tweak the spirits? And if you're from the Midwest, I'd love to hear how your family makes it because they're the ones who kept this thing alive. Thanks for keeping history alive with me, one cocktail at a time. Until next time, drink responsibly, or at least drink historically.