This Creamy Winter Drink Has Murky Origins

Hot chocolate is a classic creamy beverage across the United States when the weather turns cold. But it isn't the worldwide top choice for drinks that warm you up from head to toe. If you're in need of inspiration, look to the past. All over the Levant, Turkey, and Egypt, you can find vendors selling sahlab in winter. Spread throughout the world by the Ottoman Empire, this sweet, aromatic hot drink is a wintertime warmer made with milk, rose or orange blossom water, and salep powder. Variations add ground desiccated coconut, pistachio, and ground ginger. Salep powder is made from the tuber of an orchid that is ground to contribute its starchiness and floral taste. It is also often used in Persian ice cream to give it that stretchy, chewy consistency. However, the endangered orchid is most commonly replaced with cornstarch to achieve the desired thickness.

Its history isn't clear, but it's thought the drink originated as a non-alcoholic option when the Ottoman Empire converted to Islam in the 8th Century. Before that, the ancient Romans made an aphrodisiac out of orchid roots called satyrion. The ancient Greeks also drank the powder mixed into wine, making a very different drink from what the Turks created. The modern drink reached Germany and England at some point in the 18th and 19th centuries. Now you can find mixes in many Middle Eastern markets, but because true salep powder is rare, most will be made with alternatives, and you can make your own.

If you're looking for worldly inspiration for other hot drinks this winter, you have many options. Of course, there are the obvious ones like chai, hot apple cider, and health elixir, golden milk. Along the lines of golden milk, which has its roots in the Indian Ayurvedic drink haldi doodh, you can also make badam doodh. Badam doodh is milk with ground almonds, saffron, cardamom, and sugar. It's warming and perfect for a cold, rainy day.

Throughout Mexico and much of the U.S., you can find atole and its most popular variation, champurrado. Atole is a corn-based drink made by adding masa, the nixtamalized corn flour used in tortillas, to water for a thick, hearty beverage. If you love hot chocolate, give champurrado a try. It's an atole with chocolate and sugar added.

Before tea made its way to Russia, the notoriously cold country found other drinks to warm up in the winter. Sbiten was served on street corners throughout the winter. It's simple and delicious — just hot water with honey, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and jam.