Old Shanghai Eggnog

Oh, how they loved eggnog in old Shanghai. But of course: it was very boozy, very fun, and very rich, which is a pretty apt description for the spirit of old Shanghai. And luckily for us, their recipes survive. So just in time for Christmas partying, we bring you a pair of delightful, delicious 1920s Shanghai eggnog recipes from the (secret, in some cases) recipe files of Shanghailanders John Stauffer Potter and George P. Hunt, and the equally delicious stories behind them.

Caveat: Shanghailanders liked their liquor A LOT, and these eggnog recipes are suitably boozy. Not for the faint-hearted!

John Potter’s Shanghai Eggnog

“Lucille Bassett’s southern eggnog recipe, per John Stauffer Potter” comes to us from John’s daughter, Patricia Luce Chapman. Née Patricia Lee Potter, she was born in Shanghai in 1926 at the Country Hospital to American businessman John Potter and journalist Edna Lee Booker (the author of News is My Job and Flight from China, the latter written with John).

Left: John Potter, in his Shanghai Volunteer Corps uniform. Center: John Potter and Edna Lee Booker, on their wedding day. Right: Patricia and John, at Jessfield Park (Zhongshan Park today).

Patricia, her brother John, and their mother left China in 1941, and in 2014, when her memoir of growing up in old Shanghai was published (Tea on the Great Wall: An American Girl in War-Torn China), she told us in an interview that she’d never return.