When it comes to rustling up unusual ways of consuming booze, there is no end to human ingenuity. Battle-hardened readers of Hot Rum Cow might recall our recent piece on ‘ttongsul’ – a Korean tonic made from fermented baby poo. Then there is the Downtown Hotel in Dawson City, Canada, which infamously sells a whiskey cocktail garnished with a (real) human toe. Sadly, we’re not making this up – the cocktail was inspired by the amputated frostbitten toe of a trapper found in a bottle of moonshine.

Relax though, for this particular tale of booze alchemy is considerably more wholesome. Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you eggs and we bring you avocados. Pour yourself a Snowball and polish your silver spoon; you have arrived in the curiously yellow world of advocaat.

Our story begins in the Dutch Antilles. Records from the 17th century portray Dutch sailors imbibing a potent brew made of alcohol (probably genever – the Dutch spirit that evolved into gin) and the pulped flesh of avocados. Some say it was inspired by an avocado-based drink enjoyed by the indigenous people of the Caribbean, or possibly natives as far afield as Brazil. However, it seems more likely that it was the sailors themselves that came up with the idea. After all, north Europeans have a long, undistinguished history of mixing weird stuff in the name of getting crocked.

This avocado hooch must have had something going for it though. Whilst the original recipe is long forgotten, adventurers returning to the Netherlands fondly attempted to recreate it back home. There was a problem though. Avocados were not available in Europe – so what on earth could they use as a replacement?

Cracking yolks

Move forward 300 years to Serskamp, a small Belgian town near Ghent. In the premises of boutique liqueur producers De Klok, two women are sitting next to a large consignment of eggs. Their job is simple, but they are extraordinarily good at it. Each two to three days, they crack and separate 12,960 eggs – enough to make 1,000 litres of advocaat.

Egg yolk might not necessarily seem the most obvious replacement for pulped avocado, but it’s yellow, it’s gooey and it works. Sugar was added to sweeten the drink and, over the years, advocaat became a celebrated Low Countries tipple. The name is probably derived from avocado, but there is another theory. ‘Advocaat’ is also Dutch for ‘advocate’ or ‘lawyer’. The theory goes that the legal classes warmly embraced this egg liqueur as a post-chambers livener, and it was subsequently named after them.

Of course, the idea of an egg-based drink wasn’t confined to the Low Countries. Across the North Sea, English revellers created a similar concoction, particularly at Christmas, called eggnog – and it remains a festive favourite in North America.

In Britain today, most people know of advocaat as the base ingredient of a Snowball, mixed with lemonade and lime juice. It comes in a large bottle, usually Warninks, and lurks sullenly at the back of dusty drinks cabinets.

But as the appeal of advocaat in the Low Countries faded amongst sailors and lawyers, a thicker version (like an alcoholic egg custard) became more popular, particularly amongst ladies of a certain vintage. And so today, if you order an advocaat in a Dutch or Flemish cafe, you will find it is more likely to come with a spoon than in a glass.

If you want to sample an artisan advocaat that offers a modern twist on the drink’s traditions, De Klok is a great place to start. The owners, married couple Dirk Galle and Veerle Van de Velde, have twice entered their advocaat into the International Wine & Spirit Competition (IWSC) and on both occasions it won ‘Best In Class’. However, the judges didn’t know what to make of the product’s thick consistency.

“We were only given a Silver medal because people outside Belgium and Holland think of advocaat as a liquid,” says Van de Velde. “But older people here say, ‘This is the way it should be, with a spoon!’. The strange thing is that if you make advocaat naturally, it is thick – so we eat it on its own or put it on top of ice cream. To make liquid advocaat, you have to use pasteurised eggs and preservatives, which is not our way.”

Yet don’t be fooled into thinking that De Klok doesn’t have a kick. As advocaats go, it has a higher-than-normal alcohol content of 22% ABV, and eating a large portion for the first time is a strange experience.

The consummate host, Galle places two bowls before the Hot Rum Cow delegation. The room is warm and I feel a bead of perspiration run down my forehead. Slowly, spoon by spoon, we begin eating ourselves tipsy.

“It all started in 1943 with my father Raoul,” says Galle. “He was a rail worker but started making genever and liqueurs as a hobby during the German occupation. When the war was over, he turned it into a business. He did well for many years but then the growth of supermarkets made a big dent in the market.”

Galle places two bowls before the Hot Rum Cow delegation. The room is warm and I feel a bead of perspiration run down my forehead. Slowly, spoon by spoon, we begin eating ourselves tipsy

When Galle and Van de Velde took over in the 1980s, interest in sweet liqueurs was at an all-time low – they realised that something drastic was required to save the brand. Abandoning many of his father’s liqueur products, they relaunched the advocaat in rustic packaging and focused on selling it at markets, talking directly to their customers.

“People would say, ‘Oh my grandmother used to drink that but I’ve never tried it’,” says Galle. “You could give them a sample, talk to them, and they would end up buying a jar.

For several years, De Klok was a genuine cottage industry – the advocaat was made in the family kitchen. But Galle and van de Velde now have a factory, and an expanding range including advocaat-filled chocolates, jams, speculaas (spiced biscuits) and genevers.

“When you’re a small business, you have to be a specialist and offer something that people can’t get elsewhere,” adds Galle. “So we focused on creating a really high-quality product. That’s why we use fresh egg yolk. Big manufacturers buy buckets of pasteurised egg yolk – but it doesn’t taste the same.”

The De Klok advocaat is made from 96% ABV grain spirit, vanilla sugar, granulated sugar and condensed milk. It is preservative-free – the alcohol content is so high that none is required. And if you’re wondering what happens to all the unwanted egg whites … they’re sold to a meringue manufacturer.

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