Many fans of the Bond novels relish the attention paid to the food and drink enjoyed by their hero. Like his creator, James Bond is an epicure and takes great pleasure in his food, with particular care dedicated to a good breakfast. Perhaps because he knows that every meal may well be his last, he ensures each is of the highest quality. This cocktail – a member of the Fizz family thanks to the egg white and Champagne – is designed as the perfect accompaniment to a fine breakfast. The predominance of dry flavours (gin, sherry, grapefruit) is levelled by a shot of sugar syrup, and the red fruit notes of the fine pink Champagne (Taittinger for preference, as specified by Bond). This is a bracing, energizing breakfast tipple, certain to set you up for the day – even if you haven’t been to bed.
35ml (1¼fl oz) Tanqueray gin
15ml (½fl oz) Tio Pepe sherry
20ml (¾fl oz) grapefruit juice
2 teaspoons lime juice
20ml (¾fl oz) simple syrup (see here)
20ml (¾fl oz) egg white
50ml (2fl oz) Taittinger Prestige Rosé (or other pink Champagne)
TO GARNISH
Peychaud’s bitters
pink grapefruit slice
Measure the ingredients, except the Champagne, into a cocktail shaker without ice. Shake vigorously to whip the egg white into a foam, then top up with ice. Shake vigorously again, then strain into a large coupette. Top up with Champagne and garnish with a streak of Peychaud’s bitters and a pink grapefruit slice.
BREAKFAST ROYALE
My own favourite food is scrambled eggs (in “Live and Let Die” a proof-reader pointed out that Bond’s addiction to scrambled eggs was becoming a security risk and I had to go through the book changing menus).
IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN, 5 APRIL 1958
She sipped at her Champagne and rarely glanced at Bond. She didn’t smile. Bond felt frustrated. He drank a lot of Champagne and ordered another bottle. The scrambled eggs came and they ate in silence.
CASINO ROYALE
CHAPTER 14. “LA VIE EN ROSE?”
“Oh, here’s Franz. Franz, can I have scrambled eggs and coffee? And tell them to make the scrambled eggs runny like I always have them.”
ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
CHAPTER 11. DEATH FOR BREAKFAST
Making the eggs and coffee made me feel hungry. I couldn’t understand it. Ever since the two men had got in through that door, I had been so tense and frightened I couldn’t have swallowed even a cup of coffee. Of course, I was empty from being sick, but in a curious and, I felt, rather shameful way the beating I had been given had in some mysterious fashion relaxed me. The pain, being so much greater than the tension of waiting for it, had unravelled my nerves and there was a curious centre of warmth and peace in my body. I was frightened still, of course – terrified, but in a docile, fatalistic way. At the same time my body said it was hungry, it wanted to get back its strength, it wanted to live.
So I made scrambled eggs and coffee and hot buttered toast for myself as well, and, after I had taken theirs over, I sat down out of sight of them behind the counter and ate mine and then, almost calmly, lit a cigarette.
THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
CHAPTER 9. THEN I BEGAN TO SCREAM
He would have one more dry Martini at the table, then smoked salmon and the particular scrambled eggs he had once (Felix Leiter knew the head-waiter) instructed them how to make.* Yes, that sounded all right. He would have to take a chance with the smoked salmon. It used to be Scotch in the Edwardian Room, not that thickly cut, dry and tasteless Canadian stuff. But one could never tell with American food. As long as they got their steaks and sea-food right, the rest could go to hell. And everything was so long frozen, in some vast communal food-morgue presumably, that flavour had gone from all American food except the Italian. Everything tasted the same – a sort of neutral food taste.
OCTOPUSSY AND THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
FROM 007 IN NEW YORK
*SCRAMBLED EGGS “JAMES BOND”
For four individualists:
12 fresh eggs
Salt and pepper
5–6 oz. of fresh butter
Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small copper (or heavy-bottomed saucepan) melt four oz. of the butter. When melted, pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk.
While the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove pan from heat, add rest of butter and continue whisking for half a minute, adding the while finely chopped chives or fine herbs. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink Champagne (Taittinger) and low music.
OCTOPUSSY AND THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS
FROM 007 IN NEW YORK
Eggs were among Ian Fleming’s favourite foods. He would eat them for breakfast every day at Goldeneye and often at other mealtimes, too. “Scrambled eggs and coffee never let you down,” he once remarked.
Bond’s passion for scrambled eggs may have come from their scarcity: egg rationing finally ended in 1953, the year that the first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published.
The Café Royal in Dover was one of Fleming’s favourite haunts. He immortalized the restaurant in Moonraker when Bond pays a visit and orders the inevitable plate of “scrambled eggs and bacon and plenty of coffee with it”.