Warm Mead with Egg and Butter, Digby’s 1669 Morning Draught
Reader ratingsMead warmed gently with an egg yolk and a knob of fresh butter, drunk hot first thing: a morning cup from Sir Kenelm Digby’s 1669 book, at about 10% ABV.
- Recipe makes
- About 260 ml, 1 cup
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Warm mead with egg yolk and butter in a plain pewter cup, with toast on a wooden trencher.
The story behind the recipe
Sir Kenelm Digby’s Closet, printed in 1669, four years after his death, gives a long recipe for “Mr. Pierce’s Excellent white Metheglin,” a mead brewed with herbs, ginger, cinnamon and cloves and kept in Spanish-wine casks. At the end it says how the household drank it in the morning. For colds, coughs and consumptions, heat a pint, “Then dissolve the yolk of an Egge or two in a Pint of it, and some fresh Butter, and drink it warm in the morning fasting.”
A remedy and a breakfast
Digby frames the warm cup as a cure, and we pass that on as his claim, not ours. The same paragraph gives the plain way of drinking it: straight from the barrel, “a large draught … with a toste early in the morning (eating the toste) when they intend to dine late.” Either way it was a drink to start the day on, in the years when coffee was still new in London. Where it sits among the beer, wine and first coffee of English mornings is the subject of What Did People Drink Before Coffee and Tea?
Read more about this recipe
Our version
Mr. Pierce’s metheglin takes five or six months in the cask, so we start from a bottle of mead. Digby’s dose is a pint with one or two yolks; we halve the pint and use one yolk. He says to “burn it (like wine) or rather onely heat it,” so we heat it, and only to 71°C (160°F), the USDA’s safe point for eggs and well short of a boil, the same method as our medieval ale caudle. Digby says nothing of how it tastes beyond calling the metheglin pale and the cloves “a most pleasant flavor,” so choose a mead you already like. It comes out at about 10% ABV. To brew a herb mead of your own from the same book, start with Gower’s metheglin.
This Metheglin is a great Balsom and strengthener of the Viscera; is excellent in colds and coughs and consumptions. For which last they use to burn it (like wine) or rather onely heat it. Then dissolve the yolk of an Egge or two in a Pint of it, and some fresh Butter, and drink it warm in the morning fasting. As it comes from the Barrel or Bottle, it is used to be drunk a large draught (without any alteration or admixtion, with a toste early in the morning (eating the toste) when they intend to dine late.
Recipe makes: About 260 ml, 1 cup
Ingredients
For About 260 ml, 1 cup. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 260 ml, 1 cup.
- Semi-sweet mead240 ml
- Large egg yolk1
- Unsalted butter, fresh and cold10 g
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 240 ml semi-sweet mead
- 1 large egg yolk
- 10 g unsalted butter, fresh and cold
Equipment
Small saucepan
Small bowl
Whisk
Instant-read thermometer
Instructions
Put the egg yolk in a small bowl and whisk in two spoonfuls of the semi-sweet mead until smooth.
Warm the rest of the mead in a small saucepan over low heat until it steams and reaches about 60°C. Do not let it simmer.
Pour about half of the warm mead onto the yolk in a thin stream, whisking all the time, then pour the mixture back into the pan.
Stir over low heat until it reaches 71 to 75°C on the thermometer, about 2 to 3 minutes. Never let it bubble; if it starts to steam hard, lift the pan off the heat and keep stirring.
Take the pan off the heat and whisk in the cold unsalted butter until it melts. Pour into a warmed cup and drink at once, with toast if you like.
Nutrition
320calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 260 ml, 1 cup
Estimated for one cup from USDA FoodData Central values for a large egg yolk and unsalted butter, with 240 ml of semi-sweet mead at 12% ABV and about 40 g of sugar per liter; a drier mead gives less.
Recipe notes
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Digby’s “Pint” is the old English wine pint, a little under half a liter. One cup here is half his dose.
Use the freshest egg you can, kept in the fridge until you start, or a pasteurized yolk. Make it just before drinking, and don’t reheat it.
For a cup with no alcohol, warm Digby’s spiced honey water in place of the mead and follow the same steps. That is our adaptation, not Digby’s.
Eggs beaten into something hot and sweet need no mead: Egg Gruel of 1839 heats them in milk with nutmeg.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Sir Kenelm Digby, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened (London: E. C. for H. Brome, 1669), “Mr. Pierce’s Excellent white Metheglin”, pp. 50–54
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Hot Drinks
- Region
- British
- Era
- 17th century
- Base
- Mead
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Winter