Zopie

A proper Dutch winter used to announce itself by sound. Not the thermometer, not the weather report, but the first scrape of skates on natural ice, that long iron whisper across a canal. Then the stalls appeared: koek-en-zopie, cake and zopie, little wooden counters on the ice where you warmed your fingers around a cup and pretended you had only stopped for the children.

The name already tells you how modest this drink is. Zopie comes from zoopje, a small drink or little sip, and that is exactly its scale: not a grand punch bowl, not a tavern ceremony, just a hot cup passed to a skater between laps. But let me tell you a secret. The Dutch winter drink was never plain. Beer or wine, egg, sugar, rum, cinnamon, clove, sometimes lemon: a frugal country knew perfectly well how to put spice cargo into a tin ladle.

The only real trick is gentleness. Egg gives zopie its old-fashioned body, but egg is also proud and easily offended; boil it and you'll get sweet scrambled beer, for obvious reasons. So you warm the drink slowly, whisk, keep it below a simmer, and stop when it thickens enough to coat the spoon. Hou het altijd simpel, always keep it simple. A cup, a biscuit, cold hands, and the whole canal for a dining room.