Prairie oyster (cocktail)

A Prairie Oyster (or prairie cocktail) is a drink consisting of a raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt and ground black pepper. The egg is broken into a glass so as not to break the yolk, which causes the drink to bear a similarity to the texture of an actual oyster. The drink is typically served as a hangover cure.

Recipe

Ingredients for Prairie Oyster:

• 1 raw egg
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 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 salt and pepper, and Tabasco sauce.^[1]

In popular culture

• In the 1959 film "The Nun's Story (film)" the character Gaby is given the drink to aid her in recovery from suspected tuberculosis.
• Gomez Addams is seen preparing a salt and pepper free version of the cocktail to treat his newborn's hangover in Addams Family Values.
• In "Heathers: the Musical" Heather Chandler asks Veronica to make her this drink.
• The drink features early-on in the 1972 film adaptation of Cabaret, being drunk by actress Liza Minnelli as a hangover cure offered to her love interest and co-star Michael York.
• In the Japanese animated series Cowboy Bebop, the main character Spike Spiegel is seen making a prairie oyster to help with a hangover in the episode Heavy Metal Queen. The ingredients are slightly altered when the bartender pours what appears to be a clear liquid from a bottle, which could be either water or gin.
• In the 1936 film "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is served a Prairie Oyster by his servant to "make his head feel smaller" when he is suffering from a hangover.
• Jeeves frequently cures Bertie Wooster's hangovers in the P G Wodehouse novels and stories with what Wooster refers to by such locutions as "one of those magic thingies of yours": in fact a prairie-oyster.
• In the television show, "The Jeffersons," the character Tom (Franklin Cover) is given the drink by his daughter, Jenny (Berlinda Tolbert), the morning after the Willis' attendance of a party. She served the drink with tomato juice. (Season 2, Episode 17 "The Break-Up, Part 2")

See also

• Amber Moon, a similar drink containing alcohol

References

1. Wondrich, David. "Prairie Oyster". Esquire.