“I all the time evaluate dishes from our childhood as like a heat blanket,” says Polish meals author Michał Korkosz of gogl-mogl. “They remind you while you had been the happiest in your life.”
Sophia Pappas for NPR
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Sophia Pappas for NPR
“I all the time evaluate dishes from our childhood as like a heat blanket,” says Polish meals author Michał Korkosz of gogl-mogl. “They remind you while you had been the happiest in your life.”
Sophia Pappas for NPR
So long as there have been scratchy throats, runny noses, and hacking coughs, there have been dwelling treatments completely different cultures have turned to hoping to really feel higher. Rooster soup, ginger tea, mustard plasters. And for these with household roots in Jap Europe – a drink often called gogl-mogl.
Additionally known as goggle-moggle, kogel mogel, guggle muggle, גאָגל-מאָגל, the drink is principally like a sizzling eggnog, or sabayon, thinned out to be drinkable. It is broadly been used as a treatment in Ashkenazi Jewish communities. Whereas the drink exists in non-Jewish communities as properly, it is often seen as extra of a dessert.
Eve Jochnowitz, a Yiddish instructor and Jewish culinary ethnographer, jokes that gogl-mogl “appears to be a type of issues like rooster soup – it is all the time been there.”
Gogl Mogl is an Jap-European drink with egg, milk and honey.
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Jochnowitz says the most typical model begins with sugar or honey blended with egg yolks, after which crushed into sizzling milk.
There are barely completely different variations – generally a shot of brandy or slivovitz was thrown in; generally chocolate or butter was added. Jochnowitz says gogl-mogl was discovered throughout Europe.
“Over all the Yiddish-speaking world – from Czechoslovakia within the West, so far as the borders of the Russian Empire within the East, I might say.”
And with immigration, gogl-mogl made its manner into America. The late New York Metropolis Mayor Ed Koch gave out his model at a press convention in 1987. A singular model, it ought to be famous, that forgoes the eggs and milk, and as a substitute mixes the honey and booze into some fresh-squeezed citrus (he notes that as an elected official he would not drink alcohol on the job, however would have gogl-mogl to recuperate in a single day).
In a current interview on WHYY’s Contemporary Air, singer Barbra Streisand recalled her mom recommending it after her first actual gig.
“The very first thing she stated, I keep in mind, was ‘Your voice wants eggs. You must use a gogl-mogl, trigger your voice must be stronger.'”
In an oral historical past with the Yiddish Guide Heart, Al Rosen, a WWII veteran, remembers how his father would additionally put together gogl-mogl to coat his throat earlier than his position chanting Kol Nidre, the melodic service ushering within the excessive vacation of Yom Kippur.
Now some individuals have candy recollections of fogeys and grandparents bringing a gogl-mogl to their sickbed. However lots of people dreaded it.
“What the individuals who have unfavourable recollections appear to have in frequent is that the egg yolk was not crushed with the sugar,” observes Eve Jochnowitz. “You’d put in a complete egg yolk, and the thought was that you’d swallow the entire egg yolk when you drank the recent beverage. And that does not sound fairly as fabulous.”
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, curator at POLIN Museum of the Historical past of Polish Jews, remembers being given gogl-mogl for chest colds throughout the harsh winters of her Toronto childhood. And it was not a pleasing expertise.
“Oh no, hell no,” she laughs. “No, no.”
However she does acknowledge it had a soothing heat. And she or he wonders about its future.
“I am curious to what extent gogl-mogl persists amongst an American-born technology – particularly individuals who had been born, as an example, 20, 30 years in the past. And to what extent it is a legacy of moms, grandmothers, great-grandmothers from Europe.”
Culinary ethnographer Eve Jochnowitz says the steepest decline in all probability got here within the Seventies, because the immigrant technology aged. Entry to over-the-counter medicines, and a decrease tolerance for giving uncooked eggs and alcohol to kids additionally could have performed a task.
In keeping with Michał Korkosz, a meals author in Poland, you’ll be able to nonetheless discover the dessert model of gogl-mogl in Jap Europe. Although even then, it is seen as a relic of the previous, hearkening again to Communist occasions while you could not discover any sweets within the shops.
The Polish model is extra like an egg foam – a cloud of simply whipped eggs and sugar, like the start of a sponge cake.
“It is so fluffy, it is so creamy,” waxes Korkosz. “It has its richness.”
However Korkosz notes that generally, when somebody was sick, his grandmother would pour in a little bit sizzling milk – turning this dessert right into a treatment.
“Candy deal with, however someway milk makes it a medication, proper?” he laughs.
Which raises the query – does gogl-mogl truly do something, medicinally? Dr. Diane Pappas is a pediatrician on the College of Virginia who researches cough administration in children. She says… meh?
“We have no actually good proof that honey does a complete lot for cough,” explains Pappas. “There’s a couple of research that say it’d assist a little bit bit. They don’t seem to be nice high quality, however it’s actually all now we have.”
Nevertheless it won’t be something particular in regards to the honey.
“There’s some suggestion that simply the truth that you might have some sort of viscous liquid sort of coating and calming and soothing your throat and rising saliva and no matter, that these issues also can assist consolation somebody with a cough or cold signs.”
Pappas says if you’d like a gogl-mogl, go for it. Energy and heat fluids all the time assist. And so long as the egg is absolutely cooked, and you are not giving honey to infants, it is fantastic.
“I do not know that there are downsides – except you place the alcohol in it,” says Pappas. “Do not know that there is a enormous upside both.”
Pappas says whereas she will’t ethically prescribe placebos – that impact can play a task in all kinds of issues individuals take hoping to really feel higher.
And Polish meals author Michał Korkosz says there’s additionally the consolation of custom.
“I all the time evaluate dishes from our childhood as like a heat blanket. They’re so cozy, and so scrumptious, and so they remind you while you had been the happiest in your life.”
Which would be the good factor, while you’re feeling crummy.
