The Hirshon Haute Dutch Eggnog – Advocaat

Citizens! The Holiday season is once again upon us in earnest, and few things delight the palate and gastronomic soul of the Earl of Eggnog more than the ritual imbibing of this December treat (and there are so MANY world variations of this ova-powered treat to indulge one’s palate in)! I previously posted the Platinum standard for American eggnog a decade ago – the unmatched historical version from Galatoire’s restaurant in New Orleans – but today, I wish to share a sinfully-rich version of eggnog from the Netherlands, the Dutch treat known colloquially as advocaat!

In fact, the next eggnog recipe AFTER this one (a unique drink from Italy!) also requires a derivative of advocaat in its making – the glory that is eggnog should never be confined to just ONE recipe, after all! 😀

Advocaat or advocatenborrel is a traditional Dutch alcoholic beverage made from eggs, sugar, and brandy. The rich and creamy drink has a smooth, custard-like consistency, with a typical alcohol content that is generally between 14% and 20% ABV. Its contents are typically a blend of egg yolks, aromatic spirits, sugar or honey, brandy, vanilla, and sometimes cream (or condensed milk). Notable makers of advocaat include Filliers, Warninks, Bols, Darna Ovo Liker, DeKuyper (in two varieties), and Verpoorten.

According to the manufacturer Verpoorten, company founder Eugen Verpoorten developed the Advocaat Likör in its current form outside of the Netherlands in an effort to share this drink with the rest of Europe.

Eugen Verpoorten founded the company Verpoorten in 1876 in Heinsberg, Germany. The Antwerp-born distiller opened the “Liqeur-Fabrik & Colonialwaaren von H. Verpoorten“, where he produced commercial Advocaat (or Eierlikör) for the first time in history. The closely guarded recipe is said not to have been changed since the company was founded. By law only an egg-based liqueur (Eierlikör) that contains at least 140g egg yolk and 150g invert sugar per liter may be called Advocaat (also Avocat). Other than many eggnog recipes that contain cream or milk, products with milk or cream cannot bear the sales designation “Advocaat” or “egg liqueur” and must instead be labeled as “liqueur with added egg“.

According to several makers, such as Verpoorten and Bols, and the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, its origins can be traced back to “abacate”, an alcoholic beverage of the indigenous people in Brazil, which was originally made with avocado as well as cane sugar, and rum. Dutch colonials of northern Brazil introduced this beverage to Europe as “advocat/advocaat”. As avocados could not grow in northern Europe, they were replaced with egg yolk, which was thought to have a similar taste and consistency, and the name derived from the avocado stuck, although the drink no longer contains any.

Even though there isn’t a credible citation or source of any old avocado-based beverage from Brazil, avocados did make the trip from Central America (and Mexico) to the Caribbean right around the same time as the Dutch were colonizing there (and in Suriname and Brazil) in the early 17th century. They most definitely would have come in contact with the avocado by 1654 – also, in the decade of the 1620s, rum production was recorded in Brazil.

Dutch texts from the 17th century describe a yellow-colored drink popular with sailors of the period and made in the Dutch Antilles (Dutch Caribbean Islands) from an avocado flesh mixed with alcohol. Indeed, Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish naturalist is believed to have coined the word “avocado” in 1696, when he mentioned the plant in a catalogue of Jamaican plants. He also called it the “alligator pear-tree”. The name of the fruit ‘abacate’ in Portuguese had already evolved to advocate by Portuguese colonist in Brazil, then became advocaat in Dutch (source: Simon Difford).

The long way by sea made import of the avocado fruit impossible, and the small trees just wouldn’t flourish in European climates. People therefore started looking for a substitute for the creamy yellowish flesh of the fruit. A liqueur-fond Dutchman named as Johannes Cooymans was the first to experiment with eggs and brandewijn (brandy) and is considered as the inventor of “Advocaat” liqueur (around 1825). In 1828, Cooymans started a distillery in downtown ‘s-Hertogenbosch. There he developed the egg drink “advocaat.” In 1876, the Antwerp distiller Eugen Verpoorten established a distillery in Heinsberg near Aachen, Germany, which made an egg liqueur (Eierlikör in German) using eggs, sugar, distilled alcohol, and other ingredients.

Today, jars and wide mouth bottles of thick advocaat are sold mainly in the Netherlands and Belgium, though they may also be available in Germany, Austria, and South Africa. In particular the original thick variety, i.e., without albumen, is used as a waffle, pancake or poffertjes topping, as an ingredient in ice cream, custards, pastries and similar desserts, or as an apéritif or digestif. The latter, possibly topped with whipped cream and then occasionally sprinkled with a touch of cocoa powder, is served in a very tiny bowl or small glass from which it is eaten by use of a teaspoon. In Belgian restaurants and taverns, it may be a complementary accompaniment to a coffee.

Advocaat is also the Dutch word for ‘lawyer’ in the sense of ‘solicitor’. As the name of the drink, it is short for advocatenborrel, or ‘lawyers’ drink’. Borrel is Dutch for a small alcoholic beverage (liqueur, brandy, etc. but not beer or wine) consumed slowly during a social gathering or an informal occasion where colleagues meet for light conversation with beer and wine. According to the 1882 edition of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal (‘Dictionary of the Dutch Language’), it is zo genoemd als een goed smeersel voor de keel, en dus bijzonder dienstig geacht voor een advocaat, die in ‘t openbaar het woord moet voeren (“so named as a good lubricant for the throat, and thus considered especially useful for a lawyer, who must speak in public”).

Matthew-rowley.blogspot.com waxes eloquently on the two competing theories – I agree with him that the etymology in favor of the lawyers is the more likely:

One drink I didn’t get to at the time was advocaat, a venerable Dutch egg liqueur that’s not dissimilar to eierlikör, but which comes in two forms. The first, more familiar to Americans, Britons, and others outside the Netherlands, is a pourable, eggnog-like drink. Such “drinking” advocaat is for the export market and would not pass muster among old-timers in Amsterdam, Groningen, or Delft. On the contrary, domestic Dutch advocaat traditionally has been a boozy, custardlike concoction served in small cups and eaten with spoons. Both, however, have their devotees.

The domestic stuff, made with egg yolks and whites, is sometimes called dikke advocaat (“thick” advocaat) in Holland while the version we’re more likely to encounter abroad is variously known as dunne (“thin”) advocaat or schenkadvocaat (“pouradvocaat”) or drinkadvocaat, made with the yolks only. Just to confuse things, most people who drink/eat the stuff call it all just “advocaat” without modifiers.

The word itself in Dutch means “attorney” or “lawyer” but there’s no obvious connection to the legal profession at all. It is also so similar to adpokat, an Indonesian word for avocado, that two rival modern explanations for this egg-and-liquor concoction’s name have arisen.

The first is that the name somehow refers to a booze-and-avocado tipple created or adapted by the globe-trotting merchants of the VOC (the United East Indies Company) during its 17th century heyday. Irishman Philip Duff is a long-time resident of the Netherlands, a vocal proponent of its distilling traditions, and an internationally known bar and beverage consultant. He gets asked about this lawyer/avocado thing a lot.

Duff — along with many other knowledgeable souls — feel that the word’s origins are well and truly lost. In an email to me, he admits, however, that he favors the avocado angle as a result of the VOC’s voyages abroad and dominance of Indonesia in particular:

The likelihood of there being a booze of some sort made, flavoured or mixed with avocado pulp is more than even, and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine this evolving into something with eggs back in Holland, eggs having both a bit of the colour and texture of avocados. Or…

The word “abocado” crops up in Spanish and Portuguese and refers to smoothness, mellowness, sweetness – opening the door to the possibility that an eggs-and-booze drink originated in south/central America and was named there, then the name was bastardised when it was brought back to Holland.

Not everyone buys this, though. When I asked Amsterdam culinary journalist and historian Johannes van Dam about the origin of the word, he wrote:

Personally I do not think the name of the drink comes from avocado, because that fruit was not really known here when the drink was already known by that name.

This in and of itself would seem to put an end to the avocado argument. Van Dam prefers another explanation: that the word is meant to evoke a soothing throat lubrication, such as might be required for attorneys. The popular rationale for the attorney angle goes like this: In the course of their work, attorneys must speak often and eloquently. Such a rich alcoholic drink — so the thinking goes — would both soothe their throats and relax the nervous among them to better prepare them for their loquacious undertakings.

Writing in 2006, Dutch linguistic journalist Ewoud Sanders examined various origin theories offered over the last century for the word. There’s no clear winner, but he offered a convincing explanation for the side of the attorneys:

For now the battle for the origin of a little advocaat is undecided, but personally I think most of the oldest theory, that advocaat is a drink for the lawyer to keep his throat lubricated. Not so much because I think many lawyers are useful speakers, but because [in calling it that] you’re naming this motif (as linguists call it) that can also found in other drink names. Thus, a glass of genever is a keelsmeerdertje [throat lubricator] or smeerolie [lubricating oil], and the Germans know designations for spirits including Gurgelwasser [garglewater], Halsöl [neck oil] (also for beer), Rachenputzer [throat polisher] and, as other extreme, Rachenreißer [throat ripper].

Considering that opera singers have been known to gargle and swallow olive oil to soothe their throats, that in many parts of the US I’ve heard alcohol dubbed “throat oil,” and that even Mississippi state representative Noah “Soggy” Sweats, Jr. referred to alcohol in his famous 1950’s Whiskey Speech as the “oil of conversation” — well, the idea of calling alcohol as lubricant (even if it’s a tongue-in-cheek circumlocution) is compelling.

Until proven otherwise, I’m betting on the lawyers.

To make advocaat, it is actually a pretty simple process – but as per My norm, I have gilded the lily a bit from the classic version to add additional flavor complexity and reflect Dutch colonial history a bit better! To start, I have replaced a small portion of the brandy with a bit of Dutch genever, the ancestor of modern day gin! I find genever’s subtle Juniper flavor works as a suitable holiday backdrop in tandem with the classic brandy – this 17-year aged genever is My preferred version for the recipe. Given the history of the Dutch and the Spice Islands, I have also deemed it fit to add a touch of nutmeg and cardamom to the whipped cream garnish as well! This is a SPECTACULAR holiday eggnog recipe – and My beleoved Citizens of TFD Nation deserve nothing less!

As promised, all future posts will now include a link where I ask ChatGPT what it thinks of My recipe, and here it is!

Battle on – the Generalissimo

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