I like my eggnog thick.

It’s honestly the main feature I’m looking for in an eggnog. Mediocre flavor I can excuse, but if it doesn’t have that thick, creamy texture a glass of milk could never achieve, what is the point of anything?

So I was disappointed when I followed a recipe to make eggnog myself for the first time and found that… it was thin. It was lacking. It may as well have been water. I swore off making eggnog and stuck to buying my brand of choice, Southern Comfort.

But one day last year, I was feeling a little experimental. If cooking the egg and milk mixture to 160 degrees F as the recipe instructed didn’t thicken it to my liking, why not just… cook it for longer?

I discarded the thermometer and cooked it for a few minutes longer until it seemed like it had thickened some. And the result, after it had cooled and I’d beaten in the whipped egg whites, was something magical. It had the thickness of a milkshake, and yet the beaten egg whites added a frothy lightness that kept the mixture from being too heavy. It was perfect. Except… I had no idea what temperature I’d cooked the eggnog mixture to.

And so my experiment began.