When the end-of-year holidays approach, we tend to think about traditions—family traditions we repeat over and over to keep the memory of our ancestors alive—but it’s also a time to create new traditions that we’ll add to that repertoire of activities – and recipes – that will last over time and become part of our children’s best memories. It’s a season for contemplation, for telling stories, for creating new stories, and also for planning and dreaming about the new year that’s on its way. It’s a season when we also think about the past and ask ourselves how certain traditions began, how our ancestors celebrated the end of a cycle and prepared for the next one. Today I want to talk to you about Christmas punches.

If we take apart any classic Christmas punch, we almost always find the same basic formula: milk or cream, eggs, sugar, spices, some kind of liquor. Unfortunately, nowadays that original combination no longer exists; it’s just a mix of milk with ultra-processed sugar, flavorings, and gums.

But how were Christmas punches born, that original recipe, what was its purpose?

Well, the first signs of what gave rise to Christmas punches come from medieval Europe, in the form of a drink called posset.

Posset (also written possot, poshote, etc.) was originally a very popular hot drink made with milk curdled with wine or beer, almost always spiced, and it was also used as a remedy for colds, fever, and chills. Monks would add eggs and dried fruits like figs, which were luxury ingredients for the aristocracy.

By the 18th century, apparently it was only drunk in Sweden, Norway, and England.

Later on, the drink disappeared and the name “posset” began to be applied to a cold dessert made with cream, sugar, and citrus, very similar to syllabub (another similar British dessert).

But the recipe for posset had arrived in America with the colonists, and there it began to mix with local ingredients (such as Caribbean rum) and gave rise to many of the drinks we now associate with Christmas: eggnog in the United States, rompope in Mexico, ponche crema in Venezuela, coquito in Puerto Rico, and caspiroleta in Peru—an incredible legacy of milk-and-egg punches from medieval Europe. But these were not “childish” sweets; they were drinks for adults, served hot and with plenty of alcohol, and they were made to survive the cold and to celebrate.

The origin of eggnog

The term “eggnog” appears in documents from the second half of the 18th century. A clergyman from Maryland, Jonathan Boucher, mentions it in a poem around 1775. The word appears in print at the end of the 18th century and is considered an Americanism formed from egg and nog (which could refer to a strong beer or to the small wooden cups called noggins).

The combination of milk, cream, eggs, and alcohol made it perfect for the cold, and the presence of sugar and spices turned it into a festive luxury. Over time, eggnog became the drink of the December holidays in the United States. Families would prepare huge punch bowls with absurd amounts of alcohol: there are 19th-century descriptions where as much as half a gallon of brandy was used for a single batch.

The cultural importance of eggnog reaches an almost comical—and at the same time tragic—point in the famous Eggnog Riot of 1826 at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

In 1826, at West Point, eggnog was so important to the Christmas Eve celebration that when the superintendent banned alcohol and announced a “virgin” punch, the cadets decided to make their own clandestine version: they crossed the Hudson River, bought whiskey and rum, and organized a secret party in the barracks. The celebration got so out of control on the night of December 24–25 that more than a third of the cadets ended up involved: there were broken windows, destroyed railings, shouting, weapons and drawn sabers, and officers chased through the hallways. The scandal was so big that, after the investigation, about 70 cadets were implicated, 20 were court-martialed (along with one soldier), and among the participants was a young Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederate States.

There is no official “first” eggnog, but there are several historic recipes that help us see how it was drunk in different eras.

One of the most famous recipes is the one attributed to George Washington, the first president of the United States. As it is transcribed in modern compilations, it reads as follows:

“One quart cream, one quart milk, one dozen eggs, one dozen tablespoons sugar, one pint brandy, 1/2 pint rye whiskey, 1/2 pint Jamaica rum, 1/4 pint sherry. Mix liquor first, then separate yolks and whites of eggs, add sugar to beaten yolks, mix well. Add milk and cream, slowly beating. Beat whites of eggs until stiff and fold slowly into mixture. Let set in cool place for several days. Taste frequently.”

The Peruvian caspiroleta

Now, let’s talk about the Latin version, specifically the most popular one in Peru: caspiroleta.

For me, this is one of those drinks that smells like an old house, like grandma, and like a cold night. It’s a traditional hot drink from Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela. If we get formal, the Royal Spanish Academy defines it as hot milk with eggs, cinnamon, sugar, and some kind of liquor—basically the description of eggnog.

In the Peruvian case, it appears in 19th- and 20th-century recipe books such as La mesa peruana, in books like Cocina y Repostería by Francisca Baylón, and in texts by Ricardo Palma and Hermilio Valdizán, always grouped with “ponche de huevos” (egg punch) and other sweets from old Lima; and its main characteristic is world-famous Peruvian pisco.

In the Limeño memory, caspiroleta is punch, dessert, and home remedy all at once. Grandmothers made it to “sweat out a cold” when someone was sick, to care for a woman after childbirth, or simply as something warm before bed in the middle of winter. A chronicle about the traditional pastry shop La Flor de la Canela, in the Rímac district, describes it exactly like this: milk boiled with cinnamon sticks and a little piece of vanilla, very sweet, a good splash of pisco and, on top, a cloud of beaten egg whites.

If I set caspiroleta next to eggnog, we could say that eggnog ended up becoming a symbol of Anglo-Saxon Christmas, while caspiroleta, besides being a Christmas punch, stayed tied to traditional Limeño pastry and folk medicine, a dessert-drink that “heals the body and the soul.”

And why did people say these punches “cured colds”?

Because, without knowing anything about the immune system, people were very clear about one thing: if you’re sick and weak, you need warmth and energy. These punches provided exactly that. They were hot, so they soothed your throat for a while, helped loosen mucus, and gave you that feeling of warmth from the inside. They were very high-calorie: milk or cream, sugar, egg yolk, sometimes even butter; for someone with a fever and no appetite, a cup was almost a calorie concentrate. Eggs and milk were seen as “fortifying” foods for convalescents. If you add alcohol to that—which was used as a disinfectant externally and was believed to also “kill germs” inside—the combo sounded perfect: it warms you, relaxes you, makes you sweat, and makes you sleepy. The spices weren’t innocent either: cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger… all of them have been used in traditional medicine to improve digestion, ease mild pains, and “warm” the body.

Did they really cure a cold?

Not in the sense of killing the virus. But they did provide calories when you had no appetite, some protein, fats, and micronutrients, and above all that feeling of care and holding that allows the body to rest. But if we analyze the recipe with the science we have today, well, the last thing our immune system needs is dairy (which produces more mucus, and supermarket milk, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly real milk), sugar (ultra-processed, more inflammation), eggs (depending on their quality), and spices (here yes, we do have medicinal properties), alcohol (it inflames, we don’t need it). So how can we make a Christmas punch that is healthy, delicious, and truly worthy of celebration? Here I bring you a recipe with no dairy and no ultra-processed sugar.

Healthy Eggnog

Ingredients

• 350 g coconut milk (homemade if possible)
• 52 g raw, unsalted cashews
• 240 g water
• 2 egg yolks
• 60 g pure maple syrup
• 1.65 g ground cinnamon
• 0.57 g ground nutmeg
• 0.57 g ground cloves
• 0.33 g ground allspice
• 1 ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
• Pinch of salt

Method

• Place all the ingredients (except the egg yolks) in a blender and blend for at least one minute, or until there are no lumps.
• Pour the mixture into a pot and, stirring gently with a whisk, heat it without letting it come to a boil.
• Put the 2 yolks in a bowl and beat them well; add a few spoonfuls of the hot mixture little by little, stirring constantly, until the yolks are tempered.
• Pour the yolk mixture back into the pot and return to the heat. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.
• Serve in a mug and sprinkle ground cinnamon on top.