BEER SOUP.

BEER SOUP. Malcolm Gladwell in this post on the importance of coffee to the coordination of work schedules that was part of industrialization wrote: “Until the eighteenth century, it must be remembered, many Westerners drank beer almost continuously, even beginning their day with something called ‘beer soup.’ (Bealer and Weinberg helpfully provide the following eighteenth-century German recipe: ‘Heat the beer in a saucepan; in a separate small pot beat a couple of eggs. Add a chunk of butter to the hot beer. Stir in some cool beer to cool it, then pour over the eggs. Add a bit of salt, and finally mix all the ingredients together, whisking it well to keep it from curdling.’) My mother was born in Chicago, but moved back to Denmark for a year when she was six. She never forgot how much she hated the beer soup which she was given regularly in Denmark because it was believed to be good for her. She was appalled to discover that Mary Jane was drinking non-alcoholic beer, exclaiming, “You mean you drink it for the taste?”