A dark beer gently heated with sugar and spices, sometimes thickened with an egg yolk, served steaming — a winter evening pick-me-up, both sweet and bitter.

Why this dish? In Paris, Courbet frequented breweries assiduously — notably the famous Brasserie Andler, nicknamed the 'temple of realism,' where he would solve the world's problems with a tankard in hand. He consumed enormous amounts of beer, a cheerful habit that eventually ruined his health. This spiced hot beer, a 19th-century winter preparation, evokes those long brewery evenings.

Do you want to know how my evenings at Brasserie Andler went? The tankard never emptied, and ideas flowed faster than the foam! On very cold nights, we would heat dark beer with a little sugar, a cinnamon stick, and a clove — it warms a man better than a stove. I drank too much, I admit, and my liver made me pay dearly in my old age; but what company, what magnificent arguments about art and the Republic!

How it was made : Hot beer (sometimes thickened with egg, like a *caudle*) was a common winter drink in Northern and Eastern Europe in the 19th century, reputed to warm and comfort. It was sweetened and spiced to soften the hop bitterness. In the realist Parisian breweries, beer mostly flowed cold, but this hot preparation belonged to the popular repertoire of the time.

The contemporary twist : Served in a small digestif glass with a cinnamon shortbread cookie, as a winter workshop 'afters.'

Gustave Courbet · Charactorium