Latest / The Monégasque Table / Can You Put Edible Glitter in Eggnog? What the Listing Says
Transcript
- Margaux: Eggnog is the one holiday drink the federal rulebook for this pigment mentions by name. Not to include it. Dana: Welcome to The Monégasque Table. This is Ask the Table, and today's question came from a listener who plans company holiday parties: 100 guests, a punch bowl of eggnog, and a client who wants "the drink to sparkle." Can you put edible glitter in eggnog? Margaux: Here's the answer up front. No — and not for the reason you'd guess. The color-additive listing for mica-based pearlescent pigment, section 350 of part 73, lists the drinks it covers, and when it gets to non-alcoholic cocktail mixes and mixers it carves out 3 things by name: eggnog, tonic water, and beverages typically consumed without added alcohol — fruit juices, fruit juice drinks, soft drinks. Eggnog is named. So this show is not going to point you at it. Put the shimmer in the signature cocktail standing next to the bowl, and let the nog be the nog. Dana: But my planner's nog is spiked. There's a bottle of brandy going into that bowl. Doesn't that make it a cocktail? Margaux: I'm not going to tell you that a bottle of brandy moves a punch bowl from one line of the rulebook to another. That isn't a call a podcast gets to make about anybody's bowl, ours included. I can read you the lines; I can't rule on them. Dana: Sparkle Lab, quickly, because you said "not for the reason you'd guess." What did I guess wrong? Margaux: You'd guess the problem is the eggnog. On paper it isn't. Eggnog has its own federal standard — part 131, section 170 — that says what eggnog is: not less than 6 percent milkfat, not less than 8.25 percent milk solids not fat, egg yolk solids not less than 1 percent by weight. And its optional ingredients include color additives, on one condition: they must not imitate the color of egg yolk, milkfat or butterfat. So eggnog's own rulebook isn't allergic to color. That's 2 documents; I'm reading both and ruling on neither, because the pigment's own listing is the one that names eggnog, and the pigment's listing governs the pigment. Dana: Then here's my round, and it's the practical one. Eggnog is cream. It's opaque. It is the color of a manila envelope. Even if every rulebook on earth said yes, you would never see a pinch of shimmer in it. The listener's client wants sparkle they can see, and there is nothing to see in a bowl of nog. Margaux: That's the round you win, and it's the round that actually saves the party. The review analysis for this category says it plainly — glitter works best with clear drinks. So the planner's fix is the one that photographs anyway: a clear signature cocktail beside the bowl. A pinch — the printed serving is 0.1 grams — stirred into a clear glass, and the swirl is the whole show. The listing covers cocktails, cordials and liqueurs at up to 0.07 percent by weight of the finished drink, and that ceiling is a share of the drink's weight, not a fixed pinch, which is why a pinch in a full glass is the sensible serve. Dana: And the count for 100 guests? Margaux: At 0.1 grams a glass, a 15 gram jar is about 150 servings, so 1 jar covers the room with spare — about $14.99 for the whole signature-drink moment. And when the venue asks questions, ask any supplier, us included, for the product specification and a written regulatory statement naming the intended food categories. Dana: Who should skip it? Margaux: 2 skips. If the whole drinks plan is the nog and nothing else, skip the glitter this year — no glass in that plan shows it. And if the client insists on shimmer in the bowl, "the rulebook names eggnog" is the sentence you send, in writing, and your reputation walks away intact. Dana: Dana's Scorecard. I came in expecting "probably fine, it's a party." Where I landed. One: no — the pigment's own listing names eggnog as excluded, and this show won't point me at something the listing names. Two: eggnog's own standard allows color, and that changes nothing, because the pigment's rulebook governs the pigment. Three: brandy doesn't move the bowl, or nobody at this table will say it does. Four: it's opaque anyway — that's my round — so the shimmer goes in the clear cocktail beside it, 0.1 grams a glass, 1 jar for the room. My caveat: I'd like the rulebook to say what it has against eggnog. Margaux: So would I, and it doesn't say. The footnote: the MONÉGASQUE Gold 15 gram luster dust is on Amazon at $14.99, about 150 pinches at the printed serving, and gold in a clear glass is the classic holiday serve. Dana: Next time, the glass itself. How do you rim a cocktail glass with edible glitter so it actually stays put? Margaux: Vodka, a saucer, and not the jar — and there's a number nobody publishes. One note before we go — this show is produced by the team at Monégasque, with AI-crafted hosts, and every number you heard was checked by humans against the documents. See you at the table.