THE KOSHER PRAIRIE OYSTER

FROM TABLET MAGAZINE

If your head happens to be stinging the morning after an awesome party , may I humbly recommend a Kosher Prairie Oyster, which is my variation of the original famous hangover cure.

The exact origin of the drink is tough to track although it made appearances in David O. Selznick’s A Star Is Born, the Bond flick Thunderball, and Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, in which an ailing Gary Cooper is assured by his butler that the drink “will make your head smaller.”

The drink dates back to (at least) the late 19th century, is rumored also to cure hiccups, and also appears a number of times in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, the book about prelapsarian Weimar Germany and the basis for the musical (and later the film) Cabaret.

Some variations of the recipe call for tomato juice, brandy, and vinegar, but I personally prefer to risk salmonella with as little distraction as possible. P.G. Wodehouse described its powers thusly:

“It is the Worcestershire sauce that gives it its color. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.”

That’s good enough for me.

Kosher Prairie Oyster™

1 raw egg
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
horseradish
Kosher salt
pepper
2 dashes of Tabasco sauce

Crack the egg into a glass, leaving the yolk unbroken. Douse it with Worcestershire sauce, a sprinkling of Kosher salt, pepper, horseradish, and Tabasco sauce. One gulp. Don’t look back