If we asked you to take a wild guess at what goes into the Guinness World Record’s most expensive milkshake, you might say something along the lines of edible gold, pearl dust, and/or shredded $100 bills — and honestly, that would be a good guess. Edible 23-karat gold is actually on the ingredients list. But according to FoodBeast, there’s another surprising ingredient that helps make “the world’s most expensive milkshake” so special. It’s donkey milk. Let us explain.
The pricey milkshake in question, dubbed the LUXE Milkshake, hails from New York’s Serendipity 3 restaurant, home to several other “luxe” creations. Creative Chef Joe Calderone crafted the LUXE after rounding up some of the world’s most decadent dairy products, like Channel Island Jersey milk, which is much-loved for its rich high butterfat content. The LUXE also contains Devonshire clotted cream, Madagascar vanilla (which takes three years to mature), and Tahitian vanilla ice cream, made by sun-curing Tahitian vanilla beans. Chef Calderone isn’t kidding around, people.
And finally, after topping the shake with a sheet of 23-karat gold leaf, donkey caramel sauce is drizzled on top.
Sure, it doesn’t sound that dazzling, but donkey caramel sauce is made with Venezuelan cocoa, Piedmont hazelnuts, fresh donkey milk, and cane sugar, as Chef Calderone describes in the video below:
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hM2hCOLpc8"]Donkey milk is so extravagant because it’s super rare. According to a piece on donkey cheese by the YouTube channel Great Big Story, unlike cows and goats, donkeys only produce milk when they are nursing their foals. And because lactating donkeys are fairly hard to come by, a liter of donkey milk can cost upwards of $40, says McGill’s Office for Science and Society.
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOq6FEu12bs"]Donkey milk also has supposed health benefits. To keep a youthful glow, Cleopatra reportedly bathed in donkey milk — extracted from her personal herd of 700 lactating donkeys (hmm…) — on a daily basis. A more modern look into the health benefits of donkey milk, from a researcher at the Cyprus University of Technology, found that those who drank donkey milk for a few months “reported improvement with asthma, coughs, eczema and psoriasis,” McGill reports.
With that being said, it’s actually understandable why the world’s most expensive milkshake contains such a seemingly weird ingredient. If you have an extra $100 to spare the next time you find yourself in New York, you might want to indulge in the donkey milk delicacy.
If you’re looking to make a decadent milkshake (that doesn’t cost $100), then might we suggest our very own unicorn milkshake?
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFfA6gxUIO0"]It’s as pretty as it is delicious, and it will make you dream of rainbows.
